The Sport Thread

I hope you don't teach your students how to spell. Or punctuate.

I hadn't known until today of the sad passing of Martin Webster, the BBC's athletics producer of many years, who passed away last month after a long illness - the London Marathon coverage today was dedicated to him.

Martin Webster was responsible for the BBC's athletics coverage throughout the last 30 years, providing the pictures for so many significant moments from Olympic and Commonwealth Games', World and European Championships and many other sporting events.

Certainly a sad, and very significant loss.

http://www.iaaf.org/aboutiaaf/news/newsid=59660.html
http://www.sportsjournalists.co.uk/sports-broadcasting/award-winning-athletics-producer-martin-webster-has-died/

Yes I do but i'm not teaching year one literacy when I'm posting on here am I, I'm also fallable like most humans

why do people have this assumption that teachers can and will always spell and punctuate perfectly every time

The link you're referring to isn't a satellite link... The radio cameras on the motorbikes/cars used to cover Marathons are using microwave technology to link to either helicopters, or in some cases land-based receive points.

They use omni-directional aerials (or dynamically switched ones) so you don't have to point the transmission aerial in a specific direction (unlike satellite circuits), but they are line-of-sight (with a few exceptions) - and simply won't work in tunnels...

There are ways of using multiple, diversity, receivers to improve things or by having multiple mobile mid-points - so the camera uplinks directly to a helicopter but also bounces horizontally to a car or bike before or after, which then also uplinks to a helicopter and then you have a system that switches between the two routes. It's much more expensive and tricky to engineer. I think they used this for the Beijing marathon at the Olympics.

Because they are teachers?

Most other people can manage it, forgive me for assuming someone who'll educate the youth could actually construct a sentence.

Never mind eh?

In the 'simple' setup used for the London Marathon, is the link from the camera position to the helicopter/car two-way? Does the helicopter/car send back acknowledgement that it is receiving the signal? Does the transmitter at the camera position know that the line of sight has been lost or does it just blindly send the signal even if nothing is there to receive it?

Nope, it's just broadcast with no handshaking. Most digital radio links (and satellite transmissions) will use some sort of Forward Error Correction (FEC), which transmits more data than is required, so that the data stream will be more robust, and there's a higher chance that the signal will be successfully decoded in case of interference.

Though for dynamically switched transmitter arrays, there is a handshaking system that the receiver uses to tell the transmitter which of the multiple transmitter aerials to use. (The transmitter will send a short burst from each aerial, the receiver will then signal which of the aerials is best in the current set-up). This allowed directional aerials (with higher gain) to be used with much of the benefits of omni-directional aerials.

They were used with success in analogue radio cameras (where the aerials were tested in vertical blanking) - and I think are also used in some digital set-ups, though COFDM techniques have massively improved resilience with digital circuits (as effectively multi-path becomes a help, not a problem).

give me a break, formular one drivers have crashes, chiefs burn the food, teachers spell words wrong, priests swear, are you so infallible

just read the rules on here

Thanks for the answers about the live link and tunnels, Thought it was all satellite links.

I wonder if Sky are grooming Jamie Redknapp as Andy Gray's long term replacement, he does seem to crop up on Sky Sports football coverage quite a lot. I've yet to hear him in a commentary box but maybe it's only a matter of time. Although I also have a theory that Sky are biding their time until they can re employ Gray and Richard Keys again with the minimum of uproar.
Still if it doesn't happen, I reckon the traditional MNF format may return net season with possibly Jeff Stelling and Jamie Redknapp in studio.

Sky won't employ Gray and Keys again.