February 2010 Entries
Another day at Wembley and this time the club formerly from Newton Heath were facing off The Villains from Brum. We’d not treated this match as an official ‘major event’, so frequencies were available online and many were booked that way. It was good to be on the ground seeing how the web-booking translated to the effective use of spectrum on the day.
Thankfully there were no real issues reported, although as I’ve seen before, the TV gantry was a little ‘hot’ due to the cluster of talk-back antennas. This could result in portable radios cracking and popping a bit, but...
There’s nothing like a warm evening in central London. Which is exactly what I got, nothing like one. The occasion was the premier of Tim Burton’s adaption of the Alice In Wonderland story, and it rained. Oh boy did it rain. On me, and my trusty spectrum analyser.
Of particular interest to me was the amount of wireless cameras deployed in such a tight space on Leicester Square. As well as a live OB being beamed to cinemas up and down the country the main news organisations were there in force, plus a multitude of overseas crews. As a result...
Over sixteen million viewers were glued to the tube to see Stacey Slater unmasked as the killer of Archie Mitchell in an historic live 25th anniversary episode of EastEnders. So why are you reading that here? Well, given the show is normally recorded, cabled mics are generally used off camera. But for the live episode a large number of wireless mics were required at numerous locations across the set and all operating simultaneously. To complicate matters further, the location, Elstree Television Studios, is in an overlapping area covered by three television transmitters all carrying digital as well as analogue services....
It’s easy to concentrate on the big events, with their huge demands on spectrum. However, JFMG has a large number of licensees who operate wireless systems, such as microphones and links, as part of their normal activities. And these users are just as worthy of our support as any large sporting event or festival. So it was very pleasant to pay a visit on one such customer in London recently. They had microphone systems operating in a number of locations on their premises and I was able to assist in detecting some interference problems that were impairing performance.