Loss of Transmission from the Proms – and general power outages,
and sound coverage of the Proms 2017.
Mike Jordan
Bernie D tells me it was a power failure to the scanner etc after a mains spike that lost about 7 minutes of Tx.
Pat Heigham
After the disastrous launch of BBC2, I’m amazed that for a premiere live broadcast of that ilk, that there isn’t a standby independent generator to be switched in?
Like you have to have back-up.
Nick Ware
Without reliable information to go on as to what actually happened, I’d suggest that if the alleged surge caused a fault within the truck, which seems likely, any number of standby generators wouldn’t have helped.
I’m reminded of a situation some years back at Wimbledon, where our truck’s aircon system iced up, stopping the fans running, and the result was a power outage that took some time to fix. But there had been no loss of power incoming to the truck.
You basically need to be in possession of the facts before being in a position to criticise.
By the way, I was there in Pres B on the night of the BBC2 opening night fiasco, but I’ll save that for the autobiography!
Geoff Fletcher
Interesting observation. I had the same thing happen to our scanner on an OB in Greece. Power supply was there – truck power breakers dropped out.
Tony Lennon
…I was just checking if it was the big power-out I was involved in at Wimbledon around the mid-1980s when we managed to take both BBC 1 and BBC 2 off the air….
Nick Ware
No, but I remember that occasion too. Dave and I did Wimbledon for NBC Sports at that time. I think my first Wimbledon was 1982. So that’s 33 years, and all thanks to Dave D. They installed a fairly humongous generator as a permanent installation soon after that, and it’s still there as far as I know.
Tony Lennon
The one I remember was pretty spectacular. We’d just finished building CMCCR2 with the help of SCPD, who put a fail-over into the power board. If one of two incoming 64A supplies failed (or its breaker dropped out) the full load would be switched over by contactor to the other breaker.
On a very warm evening on the first Wimbledon Monday one of the two thermal breakers on incoming got a bit hot and popped out. Load was switched over as planned and … guess what…the other breaker popped out as well.
Unfortunately, instead of us being Natlocked to CAR, they were genlocked to us because we had a super-stable rubi oscillator and much of TC fell over as a result.
Meanwhile I brought the rising clamour in CMCCR production gallery to a halt by employing a trick I’d learned about thermal breakers in a North scanner, which was to discharge an entire CO2 extinguisher into the power board, with suitably cooling results. Makes one hell of a noise, and even Jonathan Martin stopped shouting at that point.
Tony Crake
I remember that, I had no idea of the odd changeover arrangements SCPD had supplied but the MOST impressive bit was it did actually stop Jonathan Martin speaking ! He actually sat down and shut up! The PA, presumably Penny Wood said.. "Well we ARE ON FIRE Jonathan !
The ‘Sound End’ were very impressed and loosed the clamps on our mini extinguisher in case we could have a go !
Nick Ware
We certainly had fun in those days! I have a fond memory of a certain electrician who shall be nameless, who had sacks of ice cubes delivered throughout Wimbledon fortnight to place over a 64Amp Ceeform join in the feed to our truck. Said plastic join would have melted in spectacular style without the ice, and indeed managed to melt the ice worryingly fast!
Dave Mundy
That reminds me of our annual school productions where wetted cotton wool sat on top of pottery knobs on the lighting rheostats to keep them cool! ‘Elf ‘n safety, wot’s that?
Geoff Fletcher
Where were we all on BBC2 opening night? I was in a little green hut at Wood Norton on TO 19 watching the catastrophe with my colleagues. Monday 20 April 1964.
Dave Plowman
De-rigging the “Dr Finlay “studio by candle light.
Mike Giles
Whatever happened to Hullabaloo and Custard?
Geoff Fletcher
Here are the almost forgotten pair:
(Click on the picture below to see larger version:
use your Browser’s BACK button to return to this page)
Mike Jordan
Secondly, is it me (as a not “proper” sound man) but did I see far fewer mics in shot last night (Sunday 16th July 2017). Saw a few by the drums/harps but no others except for the badly placed one for Barenboim’s words. Seemed to be a load more slung ones.
Am I right?
Mike Giles
Re the sound: from the horse’s mouth:
“…Pretty standard rig on stage last night. Perhaps a few more thin Schoeps tubes, which are easier to shoot around, but there was a veritable forest around the perc in the first half. And slung rig is same as last year too…”
Hugh Sheppard
I switched to Radio 3 which was fine, but were TV and radio both ‘live’?
How come what used to be called ‘Presentation’ didn’t have the R3 audio as back-up to cover the break? I recall that ‘in my day’ radio and TV had independent audio rigs, so that if TV showed the bassoons, the audience would hear them; but methinks it went to just one rig under the principles – or lack of them – set by Birt. Still left wondering how come the spike only seemed to affect vision.
Nick Ware
As I understand it, there is no Presentation as such these days. It’s basically a switching operation running to a pre-programmed schedule, all outside the BBC’s control at Red Bee Media, which is now owned by Ericsson.
www.ericsson.com/broadcastandmedia/
And, just guessing, but as far as the audio is concerned, after a power failure (improper shutdown) who’s to say whether digital sound desks, routers, comms, etc., will come back up in the exact state they were in before the break?
Pat Heigham
Wise words as usual.
And from this later posting re: computerised desks etc, are they fitted with restore points? And wouldn’t there have been some surge protection available?
Ian Hillson
You can’t beat the mechanical memory of those rotary clackit switches on old grey BBC panels!
