From:   MCR21 Restoration Project August 2020 Newsletter

“Perhaps the most ambitious de-rig which the BBC undertook, was to televise climbing the Old Man of Hoy in 1967, a vertical rock in the Orkney archipelago off the north coast of Scotland. MCR27, one of the other nine Pye OB units  which were nearly identical to MCR21, was shipped to within two miles of the rock. From there, the equipment from MCR27 had to be pulled on a sledge to the cliff overlooking the Old Man of Hoy. After a disaster, which nearly thwarted the programme, live pictures were transmitted over two days on BBC 1, reaching nearly 10 million viewers.”

 

Pat Heigham

Old Man of Hoy. Fascinating!

I remember viewing the actual transmission, and my enduring image is of a very unhappy looking sound guy huddling under a dripping canvas shelter. So far removed from the comfort of a warm studio!

My regret is that whether the ascent is of Hoy, or Everest, or K2, the programme always ends with triumph of the summit achieved. I would love to know how they got down!

Re: the Boat Race memories – there’s good sequence in “This is the BBC” explaining the coverage of the race, a bit scripted and therefore somewhat stilted, but it does show the technical side of mounting this broadcast at the time (1959).

 

Roger Long

In  February 1968 we filmed on Hoy, 6 months after the OB.

Jim Mc Taggart was shooting Orkney Stories , a “Play for Today” by George McKie Brown ,one of which was located in Ratwick Bay, under the Old man.

A remote and rugged croft dug into the shingle beach, a roaring sea all the way to Newfoundland. Our journey there each day in a beat up Doormobile was an adventure itself. The beach was still carved up from the Marine landing craft and heavy equipment used to transport the OB.

It was so windy the props guys had to hold my feet down when I was booming with an MKH 805…

We were holed up in Stromness for 3 days when a storm blew up, two Danish trawlers took shelter in the Northern Hotel, our accommodation. The first ship’s captain came in an ordered a round for all, Highland Park and Special Brew. The drinking continued for three days, all the town turned up.

It was an amazing experience.

 

Tony Grant

My son-in-law is Danish, and I thought us Irish could drink – well, when my daughter and he got married, the Danish contingent saw us off, no bother! So I can imagine what it was like on Hoy!

 

Alan Taylor

In February 1982 the BBC did another live climbing broadcast, ice climbing on Ben Nevis. It’s another of those shows where there are a load of stories that can be told. 

Triax camera cable was used in those days and it meant that camera cables could be a few kilometres long, which eliminated the need to de-rig the CCUs. The scanner could stay parked in a sensible place with long cables run out to the working positions on the mountain. 

Having said there was no need to de-rig stuff, I was working on what most people would regard as a de-rig setup well above the snow line, with cable runs of 3-4 km back to the scanner.  Rigging the cables was done by helicopter.  They coupled together long lengths of cable, waterproofed the joints, tested it to make sure it worked perfectly and rolled it onto massive drums which were fastened to the helicopter in such a way that they could unwind as it flew. In essence, they tied one end to the scanner and flew away, rolling out the cable as they went.

This was all done at the base camp and the cables were run out a few days before we arrived.  When I checked the multi cable, it had several faults.  We needed most of it working, so had to identify where the problem was.  By that time the weather had closed in and flying was unsafe, so we had to walk up to the location and carry anything we needed.  It was a very strenuous trek, especially if carrying equipment. 

In order to minimise disruption to the carefully waterproofed cable, I thought it best to tackle it the logical way.  Trudge through the snow to about the half way point, undo the cable and test it to see whether the problem was before or after that point. Undoing the multi connector was incredibly difficult and when I disconnected it, the cable sprung away from me, leaving a gap of around 30-40 cm between the two halves.

It would appear that the cables had been run out from the base camp where the ambient temperature was maybe 10°C, but laid on the snow and ice where the temperature was no greater than -5°C.  Being copper, the cable wanted to contract and when I undid the connection, it sprung apart to release the tension.

There were no short lengths of cable available to bridge the gap and the only breakout leads ( flails ) available would be needed to fix the problem.  The cable had to be reconnected, but in order to do that I had to walk to the next joint, disconnect it, walk back to where I originally was, pulling the cable back a little and then reconnecting and waterproofing at the first point before trudging back to the new break in the cable.  This procedure had to be done at every joint, all the way back to our location until the fault was found.

When we identified the section where the fault was, it was possible to use two breakout leads to re-jig which pairs go where so that enough working pairs became available.

We had logistics support from some marines. They taught us how to use their short handled shovels as an improvised toboggan and much fun was had racing down powdery sections of the snow. Not to be outdone, we showed them how we traditionally use our tough PVC rigging bags as an improvised four man bob sleigh.  Well when I say “traditionally”, I mean we made it up as we went along and they were foolish enough to copy us. When you turn a rigging bag inside out, so that the webbing is inside and the smooth surface is on the outside, with four people in it, it‘s capable of quite a fair turn of speed … and it doesn’t have any brakes either, nor anything resembling an effective means of steering.

 

David Taylor

I very much enjoyed Alan’s story about the 1982 Ice Climb…

In 1983 I decided to leave London and went to the new OB unit called Barcud, set up in Caernarfon to make programmes for the Welsh 4th Channel (S4C) which had just started.

We were going to do cover a ‘free climb’ (no ropes) of one of the tricky climbs up Snowdon. Yes I know there is a railway up as well! It was to be in Welsh (which I don’t speak) until my old ITV company LWT decided to tag along and put it on World Of Sport as well. So now it became a dual English- Welsh production.

The climber spoke both and we rigged his helmet with a couple of ECM77’s into two Micron radio packs….still VHF in those days. The Receiver pack and fx gun mics were half way up on BBC 8 pair multis and luckily we had triax Sony cameras.

I mixed fx and ‘English’ in the scanner and my colleague Huw-Aled did ‘Welsh’ in a portacabin. It was all Welsh until Dickie Davis linked to us and it then became English. However, as he got near to top,  the climber had to switch frequently between the languages to keep it interesting for both broadcasters.

I had slowly introduced some background ‘wind’ fx off a portable pro Walkman I had brought because the fx 816s weren’t giving anything and I had to kill the climber’s mic when in Welsh….as ITV didn’t want Welsh….just like the Victorians didn’t want Welsh either, of course! S4C were happy with both.

My colleague Huw told me afterwards adding taped fx was cheating, but it is quite hard to make climbing a ‘spectator sport’ isn’t it….I guess that’s why it’s so rarely done.