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Lateral Linking Provides Turf and Surf Success

LLB provides unique wireless camera system to major golf and surf telecasts.

- 18 hole golf coverage with self-contained wireless cameras fitted with transmitters and whip antennae.

The use of wireless camera RF systems developed and operated by Lateral Linking Broadcast is delivering significant savings in time and money to the producers of major sporting events.

A related benefit of using the new systems that will also gladden the hearts of all events organisers, producers and directors was that they enabled one of the biggest regional golf telecasts to continue despite a massive lightning storm.

Working with Wayne Soutar, executive director of Soutar Video Productions, and Michael O'Dwyer, executive producer, IMG Sports Media, Lateral Linking Broadcast designed, delivered and operated innovative wireless camera systems for two recent Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) events.

The first was the Honda LPGA Thailand 2009 championship staged in late February at the Siam Country Club Plantation Course at Pattya. This was followed by the Singapore HSBC Women’s Champions tournament held at the Tamah Merah Club in early March.

Bringing Down ‘Sky High’ Risks
Traditionally RF on a golf course involves positioning a single receiver as high as possible on site and everyone pointing transmitters to that one receiver. The physical challenges of that type of operation have always been difficult with receivers mounted on cherry pickers or suspended from cranes with a height limit of 65 metres.

This ‘sky high’ approach is expensive and has always been at the mercy of nature, accidents and at the Singapore venue, the neighbouring Changi airport - one of the busiest airports in Asia.

“Working with Lateral Linking Broadcast we have been trialling the use of ground-based receive sites,” explained Soutar. “Instead of having one central receive site 65 metres in the air we have a series of receive sites mounted on camera towers around the golf course.”

These receivers provide strategic cells of coverage around a course and are connected by military grade fibre optic cable to effectively form a Local Area Network. The LAN carries signals back to a switcher and the telecast control centre.

“This has opened up a whole new world for us. We are no longer shackled to one dedicated point and now have multiple options to getting a RF signal back from around the course,” said Soutar.

“We also have multiple redundancies during our telecasts. In the past if a crane has to come down because of weather or lightning we would loose the whole live telecast.”

This redundancy was proven at both the Singapore and Thailand golf broadcasts.

“The worst was in Singapore where the biggest electrical storm I have ever seen came through on Saturday afternoon. It was like Armageddon and very intense so all eight triax cameras and their associated base stations and 30 kilometres of cabling had to be shut down and turned off.

“But of course there was still the commitment to continue the broadcast and we could continue because we were able to use the six wireless RF cameras to capture celebrity and player interviews, official notifications and other colour pieces during the two hours that play stopped.

“If we didn’t have the Lateral Linking technology in place the commentators and viewing audience would have been looking at a black screen. Everyone was very happy because we could stay on air.”

Michael O'Dwyer head of programming and production for IMG Sports Media said “the revolutionary RF system has laid the foundation and template for "the new age" of live, multi-cam production.

Bringing Down ‘Sky High’ Costs
Clients also benefited from the reduced cost of equipment and man-hours by using the Lateral Linking Broadcast RF solution.

The Singapore HSBC Women’s Champions event has previously involved 28 kilometres of triax cabling that would take four days of rigging and testing.

“This year we halved that amount of triax that we had to hire and lay down and reduced the number of triax cameras we used. And we cut the number of setup days to two days so the combination translated to a massive financial saving as well,” said Soutar.

“The RF system with six cameras and 6.5 kilometres of fibre cable was up, running and checked within five hours. That just shows the versatility and how well integrated it all is.”

The Lateral Linking wireless systems also enabled cost savings in the actual operation by using camera mounted omnidirectional whip antennas to transmit video signals to the nearest fibre receive site. This eliminated the previous need for a third person in each RF camera crew to hold up a pole mounted directional antennae in line of sight of the single crane mounted receiver.

From his perspective as producer and director, the new system gave Soutar a lot more editorial freedom as well. “Triax cameras have dedicated positions and are not that movable so you can’t quickly relocate them. The RF cameras using the multi receiver system allow so much flexibility it was unbelievable.

“I believe we have to find more efficient ways of delivering large scale productions. We must be economically and operationally smarter about the way we think and work. Employing this new wireless RF technology is achieving those goals.

“The nice thing about this is that it is totally scalable. We are already looking at other opportunities to integrate this system into other sports.”

“Our systems offer many advantages including the need for less transmitter power because less distances are involved,” said Greg Roberts, managing director Lateral Linking Broadcast. “We can also quickly identify any areas with reception issues and simply put an antenna directly in that location to fix the problem.”

Currently the system purely works to capture video from the live wireless cameras but there are plans to transmit and receive all the RF wireless radio communications and audio as well.

The system has been operated and proven in High Definition ahead of expected future format requirements.

Success in the Surf:
Lateral Linking Broadcast has also made a splash in the surf when the company provided wireless links for television coverage of the 2009 Kellogg's Nutri-Grain Iron Man Series.

Working with Castle Media and executive producer John Palmer Lateral Linking enabled water borne camera coverage for the five round series.
In a first for the sport Lateral Linking was asked to provide audio communications with one of the competitors in the two hour, live telecast on February 22.

Commentators wanted to interview retiring Iron Man champion Dean Mercer as he took to the water in his last swimming, surf rescue board and surf ski competition.

Lateral Linking assembled a waterproofed microphone that fitted under Mercer’s swim cap and a specially designed vest with pockets for the waterproofed radio receiver/transmitter.

The audio signal was received on board an accompanying jetski and camera fitted with a diversity system and send back to the control centre embedded in the video signal.