Lincoln High School

Maintenance Forces to the Rescue!

Sound issues were first discovered at Lincoln Stadium field from a citation by the City of Portland acting on a complaint. A neighbor was threatening a lawsuit over the volume of the speakers for games.

A team of experts from the Electrical Shop retrofitted the control panel and installed a theoretically “vandal-proof” system. This system consisted of a cover over the knobs and switches on the control panel. Although, at first, this system worked fairly well against vandals, it was no match for a determined soccer leader. The vandal-proof panel was pried off, the sound was cranked up and the speakers were blown out.

This left the Electrical Shop no choice but to come back in…

Tim Bly, Electronics Technician, designed a completely new system. The members on this project were as follows:

Tim Bly – Electronics TechnicianJohn Swain – ElectricianJeff Klein – MachinistMike Rothenberger – Sheet metal Worker

These four individuals did all of the installation work, which required high-lift cranes and heavy equipment. They installed speakers that fire downward to direct the sound to the audience and football stadium field, rather than outward to the neighborhood. There is no longer an echo, as there was with the old sound system.

This new system is crystal clear, weather proof, low-cost, and pointed to the source it’s intended for.

Tim noted; “It’s been measured with a decibel meter outside the fence and we couldn’t get the sound system to read at all when there was no traffic and the ambient city noise, which was 70 decibels.  The speakers can’t throw much further outside the stadium.  Hopefully the combination of these efforts will eliminate any neighborhood problems and/or complaints.”

Attacking this problem of vandalism repair at every school is prohibitive for Facilities Operations, even though reasonable. This project did much to showcase the type of talent and subject matter expertise that resides in the shops of Facilities Operations and FAM.