Most people never see the back of an equipment rack. They see a service that starts on time, a stream that looks clean, and a stage where every mic and in-ear just works. What makes that possible is hours of careful work nobody notices until something needs to be changed, fixed or upgraded.
This week’s progress update on Rock Harbor Church in Melbourne Beach, Florida, shows that work up close. Rock Harbor is Jake’s own church, and in the video above he walks through the racks in the Churchfront warehouse, then heads to the church for cable pull week.
It starts with engineering, not cable
Before anyone touches a rack, the system is fully engineered on paper. Once schematic design, design development and the construction details are done, James Garrett adds the engineering documents: rack elevations for every rack and wire schematics for every device in the system.
That order matters. Fabrication follows the drawings, so the drawings have to be complete first. It’s the difference between building a system and improvising one.
Racks built to be serviced
Rock Harbor’s two main racks are Middle Atlantic BGR racks. The side panels come off, so the lacing bars and rack rails are easy to reach, and lights illuminate both the front and back. Each rack has two power strips: one sequenced, one always on.
As Jake puts it in the video, nobody really thinks about lacing bars, power strips or lights until they’re fabricating the rack, servicing it, or upgrading something down the road. Those are exactly the moments that decide whether a rack is a pleasure or a headache to work in.
Every cable labeled, every run dressed
Around the back, Aaron has been building out the video and network rack. Power is labeled and managed into the strips. Belden 2412 network cable runs from the switch to the patch panel on the front, down the lacing bars and out to each device. The computers have labels for power, network, HDMI and USB, and a small lacing-bar shelf holds everything in place.
The team’s practice is simple. Zip ties hold everything while the rack is being built, then they go back through with Velcro. Zip ties stay only on power; data, video and audio all get Velcro, so the cabling stays soft and easy to change later. The DeckLink cards in the expansion chassis run on thin 12G SDI cable, which keeps the bundles clean.
A tour of the front of the rack
The front of the rack is organized by world:
- Computer world: the Mac minis, the expansion chassis and the KVMs, all on a Furman battery backup.
- Video world: a 12G SDI patch bay and the ATEM Constellation switcher. A Videohub didn’t fit the budget this round, so the patch bay came first. It gives Rock Harbor flexible copper runs between the rack, the stage pockets and the connector plates.
- Lighting world: an Obsidian Netron EN4 and a Pro Church Lights wall panel, with the network switch and patch bays at the top.
The audio rack is still mostly empty, because the mics and in-ears are already at the church. It will hold the Shure ULX-D and SLX-D receivers, the PSM 300 transmitters and the stage box I/O. Rock Harbor’s new speakers are powered, so there’s no amp rack at all.
The plans become the rack
Every technician works from the same plan set. The team exports it from Vectorworks and marks it up in Drawboard. Every device and every cable is labeled on the drawings, and those same labels end up on the cables in the rack. When you look at the video patch bay in the plans and then at the front of the rack, they match exactly.
Cable pull week at the church
At Rock Harbor, the infrastructure is going in. A floor pocket at front of house will feed a manned camera on a SAVY stand bolted to the floor. It’s there so there’s no surface-mount cable running from the tech booth to the camera. The runs go through conduit that was built in with the floor.
On the stage, the team installed Whirlwind floor pockets everywhere a musician, camera or network device might need to plug in. Each one has 10 connectors plus two Edison outlets for always-on power, so in-ear mixers, instruments and cameras can all connect right where they’re needed.
Chris set the back boxes. Whirlwind’s documentation calls for a quarter inch below finished floor, and the boxes on site ranged from about half an inch to over an inch. Chris adjusted how each inner shell mounts so every lid sits tight against the cover plate. It came out perfectly, and it’s a good example of why field experience matters as much as the drawings.
In the rack room, the electrical contractor’s conduit feeds a raceway, and about 70 percent of the cable pull is done. Overhead pulls come next, then the cables will be loomed, dressed and dropped straight down into the racks you saw at the warehouse.
Why this matters for ministry
None of this is visible on a Sunday, and that’s the point. A system engineered on paper, built to be serviced, and labeled end to end means volunteers can find what they need, problems get solved faster, and the church can grow without tearing everything apart.
Next, the team heads to Niceville, Florida, for a new PA install, then comes back to Rock Harbor to finish rigging the new PA and the LED screen.
Planning a system for your church? Churchfront designs and integrates complete AVL systems, from engineering documents to the last labeled cable. Talk with our team.