WA Radio Scanner Users' Group

In over 20 years in the job, this is the first time i have seen all 4 of the TV link vans lined up like this. We were at Perry Lakes Stadium for the Western Force-Henjak-Sare tribunal hearing. (And yes... the pizzas that Adrian Barich bought were delicious )















This last photo shows the equipment set up for the 2 'live crosses' that were done for News.

Now that I think about it I can't recall ever seeing all four vans lined up at the same time either!

I saw all four years ago when at Fremantle oval awaiting Damian Drum's career decision as coach of the dockers.

nice pictures as always AE!

I think the CH10 car looks awesome. Really like the paint scheme they have on it.

ABC's and CH9's look like they are getting on in age?!

Pretty expensive to cut holes in the roof of a 4WD, install a Clark mast, bolt racks of gear, alter seating, change suspension and engine cooling systems all the time. Milk as long as possible out of every OB van.....

Thanks for the pictures, sorry if this sounds strange but I have a few questions. I'm not involed with TV production myself and it interests me.

The link between the OB and your location is it wireless or do you run a cable to the van?

How do you find where to point the tower on the OB van? I have enough trouble pointing two wireless links 1km apart with ex galaxy foxtel dishes.

Unless things have changed since I gave camerawork away...

There's a cable running from the van to the spot where the camera is set up and the reporter stands. It carries video and audio from the camera and microphone, and sometimes 'return video' and 'return audio' of the signal going to air. Alternatively a portable TV might be set up near the camera for the journo to see what's going to air, and the audio to his earpiece might come from a moble phone on his belt, or from the van.

Getting the signal back to the station... easy. Not. The stations have repeaters on tall buildings in the CBD, so they start by pointing the dish in that general direction and transmitting a signal. Techies at the station look for a signal coming in and then ask the techie at the van to 'pan' and 'tilt' his dish and look for the signal strength improving ("up a bit, bit more... left a bit, right a bit... got it!").

The further from the CBD you go, the fewer locations you can get a signal out of. After a few years on the road, you get to know them all.

AE, is it still done this way?

Steve wrote: The further from the CBD you go, the fewer locations you can get a signal out of. After a few years on the road, you get to know them all.

If the network is lucky enough to have a bit of spare cash, then they don't bother with this microwave business in the sticks, they just use their satellite news gathering van and point it to a spare bird in the sky to get their news to studio. Coverage everywhere

Steve wrote:Unless things have changed since I gave camerawork away...

There's a cable running from the van to the spot where the camera is set up and the reporter stands. It carries video and audio from the camera and microphone, and sometimes 'return video' and 'return audio' of the signal going to air. Alternatively a portable TV might be set up near the camera for the journo to see what's going to air, and the audio to his earpiece might come from a moble phone on his belt, or from the van.

Getting the signal back to the station... easy. Not. The stations have repeaters on tall buildings in the CBD, so they start by pointing the dish in that general direction and transmitting a signal. Techies at the station look for a signal coming in and then ask the techie at the van to 'pan' and 'tilt' his dish and look for the signal strength improving ("up a bit, bit more... left a bit, right a bit... got it!").

The further from the CBD you go, the fewer locations you can get a signal out of. After a few years on the road, you get to know them all.

AE, is it still done this way?

Spot on mate... These pics bring back memories of me driving the 9 van... was only a year or two ago but I used to love doing the OB van, with the pan and tilt, and everything else that went along with it... including the interesting cammo's and journo's

Ausrob... Steve's post above is pretty much spot on. His memory serves him well, and very few changes in the way we do live links.

In the last picture, of my set up for the ABC live cross, you will notice under the back of the camera a yellow vinyl bag. This is the cable back to the link van. You can see a thick black cable coming from the bottom of the bag... this heads back to the van, and from the top you can see 2 video cables (red & blue, the blue one is plugged in to the camera) and hanging out of the bag are 2 audio cables (red & white, plugged in to the purple 'Y' cord).

The microphone is wireless, with the reciever built in to the camera (note the 2 small antennae on the camera, above the battery, at the rear).

On the ground in front of the Journo is a black case with a small antenna. This is the IFB kit for return comms for the Journo. It contains a wet cell battery, mobile phone, complete mobile phone car kit and a special box containing power switch/earpiece sockets/speaker switch/volume pots. The Journo wears an earpiece plugged in to this unit (via the the blue cable seen in the photo).

The camera operator has a good old fashioned 'stick in your ear' hands free cable with a mobile for direct comms with the studio control room.

Does a techo come and set all the gear up or is it up to the camera operator?

The van operator sets up can and cabling, the cammo is responsible for setting up his camera and most cammo's also plug the cables in...

i notice all the 3 major channels pointing same way.Your van not.i take it bcoz your base is in city?

Not sure how ABC works, but I know that 7 and 9 have a microwave setup in both the city and at their Dianella studios. So depending on which link gives the best line of sight they will use either one.

Yeah - ontop of the Bankwest tower is the receiver (or 4 horns) N S E W so they can select which one they point to. Some of the OB vans have a simple CCTV camera on the dish (or under the Golden Rod if they don't have a dish) and the monitor in the van. If they can see the city (or Dianella) from the monitor, then at least Master Control can get a bit of a signal and tell them to move the dish until they get the best signal-to-noise-ratio (if you monitor the UHF freqs of the TV and Radio stations when they are setting up a send, you'll hear MCR / Master Control calling out numbers which is the S/N ratio). Very rarely do we see the satellite ground kits come out. Expensive and a pain in the bum to set up. They sit at the station most of the time.
When the OB is from Freo, the repeater is on top of Fremantle Hospital. As this is easy to pick off, a mobile link is usable if you can't get the OB van there.

**Edit - IFB stands for interrupted fold back - That is basically the audio from the studio but interruptable by the producer for cues etc