London Marathon coverage in the 1990s

[commseng]

A former colleague of mine's son has given me an lot of photos that his dad took of the BBC operation for the London Marathon.
I've just scanned them in, and thought that a few of you on here may appreciate a few of them.
We were based at New London Bridge House, which has since been demolished, and is where the Shard now stands.
From this vantage point we have both TV and Radio communications operations, linking between various sites, but mainly doing the mobiles operation.
In those days it was helicopters with cameras fitted and motorbikes being relayed back by them.
We then sent those signals back either to Crystal Palace, Swains Lane or East Tower at TVC (I can't recall which, and it may have changed year to year).
The radio operation was receiving backpacks and commentary from a milk float on Band I kit, and some 1.5GHz links too.
No satellite operation or planes back then - so here are the photos, starting with the kit one level below the roof for TV.

Another on the same level for Radio.

Then up to the roof and the helicopter receive 4' dishes, with the sights to try to follow the right helicopter!

Here is the talkback and Radio Band I kit

Finally, another which I cannot recall what it was for, unless it was a backup for the other heli receivers.
(Note that there are too many receivers to fit on the brackets so two are dangling on tie.)
There were times when they flew around overhead and the triax cables would knot up, and would require unwinding.....

[Josh]

Mr Blobby's been turned into a satelite dish it seems!

[commseng]

That dish was the one that featured on Noel's House Party where it was knocked over by Mr Blobby.
It ended up in the store, and when you needed different colour dishes (we had white, black and green ones) then it was an easy one to identify.
Note that it was for microwave links, not satellite.

[aaron_scotland]

Wow amazing photos thank you!

I take it those dishes were manually tracked by hand to follow the choppers, Did the person have an output monitor to see the signal? Which I assume was analogue?

[commseng]

No, all you had was the signal meter to see if you were on pan or not, or the dot in the clouds you were fixed on was one of the other helicopters.
This was all analogue and manually panned.

[telebox2001]

I have nothing to add other than how I love the Blobby dish.

[Neil Jones]

That dish was the one that featured on Noel's House Party where it was knocked over by Mr Blobby.
It ended up in the store, and when you needed different colour dishes (we had white, black and green ones) then it was an easy one to identify.
Note that it was for microwave links, not satellite.

Why would there be a need for coloured dishes?

[technologist]

So that you can easily identify the dish in a multi dish set up…
just like you sometimes see coloured bands on (radio ) mics .

Thanks @commseng for bringing back memories….

[commseng]

Yes to identify which dish was which, and allowed a colleague in a helicopter to confirm that the dish supposed to be receiving them was on pan.
If you were into the black dish and it was obviously pointing the wrong way you could call on the RT.

The other reason for coloured dishes was to blend in with the background. Not so important on the roof of a 27 story building, but there were places where you did need to be inconspicuous.

[aaron_scotland]

Yes to identify which dish was which, and allowed a colleague in a helicopter to confirm that the dish supposed to be receiving them was on pan.
If you were into the black dish and it was obviously pointing the wrong way you could call on the RT.

The other reason for coloured dishes was to blend in with the background. Not so important on the roof of a 27 story building, but there were places where you did need to be inconspicuous.

Did the helicopters have omni antennas or were they also tracking?

[commseng]

In those days they were omnidirectional.