Special report: Setting Up Dishes, day 1
Formula 1 2012 São Paulo - Brazil Grand Prix for EBU, Special report
The Dutch satellite uplink company Multi-Link Holland is responsible for all Formula 1 EBU (European Broadcasting Union) transmissions.. This company travels the world since 2004 for the Formula 1. You can regonice them easily by their green uplink dishes. Since 2004 they produce satellite uplinks at the Formula 1 for many broadcasters, RTL Netherlands, RTL+ Germany, ORF Austria, Sky Italia, Ferrari TV, ViaSat Sweden and more. They will give us an inside look through the whole season in what they must achieve on every location they land with their equipment, starting this weekend in Melbourne Australia and ending 25 november in Brazil. At this last race in Brazil we will do a special report about this company on the Interlagos circuit.
We arrived last tuesday at lunchtime in the impressive circuit at Interlagos, São Paulo. Here we meetup with the crew of Multi-Link Holland to follow them next coming days in transmitting this Grand Prix Live for the whole world from Brazil.
On the São Paulo TV-Compound Multi-Link Holland is situated in a nice box. The rack's with equipment already arrived, ready for building up and connecting the needed cables. In the same box also the 'play-outs' will be made for the diverse ENG teams. Problem number 1, there are not tables enough to give everything a place. Instead we start with building the racks, monitors and routing. Those tables will hopefully arrive tomorrow.
Another problem.... the satellite dishes are still not declared by the Brazilian customs yet. Because it is equipment to transmit they have to check them twice. The D.O.T. expect them to arrive at night from the Airport of Campinas. So..... let's than do also some cabling already to some other boxes and the place where the dishes will be placed. Problem 3, the guy with the drill seams to be very busy... we have to wait for that. Meanwhile we are finalizing the racks and cabling for it. Besides that.... the coffee machine is installed.
At about 19:00 we receive the message that the drill is broken, it seams there is only one on the circuit... so that will be tomorrow before they come back with a new one. We almost left the TV-Compound when the D.O.T. informed us that the dishes arrived. We stayed to build them up. Setting up these dishes is a very precise job. Step by step they are place and pointed in the right direction. It is obvious these guys are very experienced in this, take a look at the following photo's
Unpacking the 3 x Gigasat FA370 dishes that will be used for the EBU transmissions in Brazil
Getting the 3 x Gigasat FA370 dishes on their spot
Step 1: Prepare cabling and put needed equipment on it's place
Step 2: Parts of teh dishes are installed
Step 3: Heads on, and dishes installed on their frame and height.
At 23:00 all was setup, it is called a day by the crew. Wednesday will be cabling and pointing the dishes to the satellites.
Every Grand Prix a new Mix on:
More photo's available on our Broadcast Brazil Facebook page, you can find them here.
mentioned:
Multi-Link Holland
EBU
Sky Sports
Globo TV Brazil
Gigasat
D.O.T.