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News Stories and Events
from around the world:

September 2004
D-Cam gets Pole Position in Shanghai
'Morning Live' Goes 'On Air' - in the Air!
10th Arab Games
Live Coverage of Wales Rally GB 2004
CAF Champions League

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D-Cam gets Pole Position in Shanghai
 D-Cam 'Clip-on' wireless camera systems were again used to cover the inaugural race at the Shanghai International Circuit, with D-Cams very much in evidence on the starting grid and in the pit lane.
The new Shanghai International Circuit has received lavish praise from drivers and team managers alike. Michael Schumacher described the new circuit as "the best race track I have ever seen", whilst Renault team boss Flavio Briatore said the facility was "fantastic" and set a new standard to which other tracks would have to aspire.
The plaudits received by the Shanghai International Circuit very much echo the praise that the D-Cam 'Clip-on' has been receiving from broadcasters all season!
Shanghai, People's Republic of China - September 04
'Morning Live' Goes 'On Air' - in the Air!
 On 29 September 2004 the SABC breakfast show 'Morning Live' included two hours of live coverage from a South African Airway’s Airbus A340–300, orbiting Sun City. SAA suggested the idea of using the Airbus to highlight their sponsorship of local South African soccer.
Gigawave engineers have been closely involved with this project from the beginning and, according to Raymond Kirkland, who heads Gigawave's Regional Sales Office in South Africa,

"The resounding success of this broadcast, is largely due to the months of detailed planning by teams from both SABC Airtime and the SAA Technical".

The biggest problem facing the Airtime engineers was that they could only get access to the aircraft as from 20:00 the evening before the live broadcast. This meant giving up any ideas of sleep if everything was going to be ready in time for take off at 06:00, the next morning. Although there were some inevitable delays during the night, the installation was completed on time, and after a short flight the aircraft was orbiting Sun City, 150kms North West of Johannesburg.

As it had not been possible to do any testing before the event, Airtime engineers spent fifteen minutes carrying out technical checks in order to acsertain the optimum altitude for the aircraft and its distance from the ground receive station. Once these were completed, the show went live on air, and stayed that way almost continuously for an hour.
The video and audio equipment used in the Airbus was supplied and operated by a dedicated Airtime team, who are quite used to providing specialized production facilities for use in unusual situations. The “fly-away” facility consisted of three cameras, two radio microphones and all the necessary equipment to provide the director with a comprehensive production facility.

The microwave transmission equipment in the Airbus A340-300 consisted of a digital MTV-D 'Mini' transmitter, a 2W digital amplifier and low profile patch antenna. The antenna was mounted on a special aluminium window replacement that was manufactured and fitted by 'SAA Technical'. In Sun City, the ground receive equipment consisted of a digital MVL-D receiver with a 0.9 meter parabolic antenna, and low noise pre-amplifier .

'SAA Technical' provided two separate radio channels, one for director talkback from the studio and the other for technical communications between the receive station and the microwave engineer on board.
Sun City , South Africa - September 04

10th Arab Games
ENTV used twelve Gigawave MVL-D2 transportable point-to-point links to feed live coverage of the 10th Arab Games to and from the TDA Tower in Algiers.
Of the twelve links, two were used to link from the Indoor arena to the main Stadium,. A further two were used to link from the Swimming pool to the Stadium, and two were used to feed the Boxing events from a city centre location to a convenient inject point.

Two more MVL-D2 links were used to feed the main outgoing circuits from the Stadium to the TDA Tower, whilst the four remaining links were used to feed additional circuits from the TDA Tower to the Stadium,

ENTV also used their two D-Cam wireless camera systems extensively during the spectacular three-hour Opening Ceremony, which the country's President attended.

Algiers, Algeria - September 04
Live Coverage of Wales Rally GB 2004
 In 2003, a special 90-minute programme included live coverage of 'Margam Park 2', the final stage 'Wales Rally GB 2003'. The programme was designed to showcase the sort of television coverage that viewers can expect in the future.
 
This year, viewers were once again treated to live coverage of the final stage of 'Wales Rally GB 2004'; this time from a 'Super Special' Stage in Cardiff Docks.

It is only recently that developments in digital RF technology that has made the live coverage of the World Rally Championship a reality. For last year’s Wales Rally GB, BBC Outside Broadcasts used two SNG trucks, two AS355 helicopters, and a pressurised aircraft, to cover the heavily wooded 'Margam Park' final stage

The use of helicopters and aircraft to relay digital signals is expensive and for several months Gigawave special project engineers, working alongside BBC Outside Broadcast links engineers, have been perfecting a system which allows live images from on-board camera systems to be transmitted to a fixed terrestrial receive site.

Commenting on the live coverage from Cardiff Docks, Nick Buckley of BBC Outside Broadcasts said,
“Through exhaustive testing, we have gained a great deal of practical experience in terms of how to use digital links for events of this kind. The fantastic coverage we got from the all parts of the ‘Super Special’ stage clearly demonstrates that all the effort was worth it!”
All ten leading World Championship Rally cars are equipped with an on-board camera system. Each consists of two remotely switched POV cameras, the output of which is fed directly into a Gigawave 'Clip-on' transmitter. Using COFDM modulation, the digital signal from each car is transmitted via a patch antenna mounted flush with the roof of the car direct to one of four MVL-D receivers, each with a Fanbeam antenna.
Cardiff, Wales - September 04
CAF Champions League
ENTV used one of their D-Cam wireless camera systems to cover the qualifying match between EST (Tunisia) and USMA (Algeria) in Group B of the Confédération Africaine de Football 'Champions League.
Throughout the match, the D-Cam was operated using 16QAM modulation. In order to ensure uninterrupted coverage of the players as they travelled down a long concrete tunnel from the dressing rooms to the pitch ENTV engineers used a Gigawave 'Rebro' unit to relay the signal from a receive point near the tunnel exit to the main receive point in the stadium.

The D-Cam was also used for the pre-start line-up, live coverage of the dugout during the game, and post-match interviews.
Algiers, Algeria - September 04

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