Football Broadcasts from the Boondocks

[Radiopronouncer]

I need suggestions for low-cost, easy-to-use, reliable ways to get good quality audio from football games in rural, isolated high school stadiums. We have Barix equipment and CellJack equipment. Using cell phones has been disappointing, because of very poor quality audio, especially when trying to have a crowd mic along with the announcers and when trying to broadcast the bands at halftime.

Some sites will have wired internet, some may have WiFi and some may have nothing other that a cell phone signal. POTS codecs are out of the price range.

 

[radiofish]

Audio Technica headsets >> USB mixer >> laptop running Skype connected to Skype at studio. Use a 3G wireless USB card.

Worked perfect, no delay last season. Returned the Barix stuff I bought and got my $500 back. Try the Skype on the 3G.

 

[boiseengineer]

Remember to read Skype's Terms Of Service for commercial use!

 

[TomT]

Most of our football sites lack any kind of wireless internet access. Until recently, one stadium didn't have cell service. We still install or borrow pots lines, and eq/process on receive. We've found cell phones too unreliable.

Yes, doing a game on Skype would be nice, but with three stations carrying games this station, I'll stick with POTS. (We use a Marti on local games, but that is almost foolproof since we leave the antenna mounted on the press box during the season)

Side note: Preparation is everything. We decided to cover a Saturday tournament game last season at a little town back in the hills. Now one local cluster has the three main high schools locked up, but this school was ignored by them and the other metro stations. One cell tower in town--not our carrier. We ordered a phone line installed--no sign of telco on Friday, arranged to run our own line out of a bus garage adjacent to the field. Saturday morning--game starts at 1, I'm out stringing phone line to the press box when the telco truck shows up. Line installed, local team wins, gets home field advantage for the next round.

Next week a Friday night tournament game, our guys all set up, already doing an extended pre-game to get all the spots in. Broadcast crew for the other team rolls in, no room in the press box, they set up across the field. Fire up the cell phone--no signal. Cell tower down--they didn't get on till half-time. Now here's the kicker: Our station is licensed to the visiting team's city.

 

[techie2]

We're not in the boondocks, and even then most places don't have internet access. Either the school IT types don't want to provide it in the press box, or if they do it's locked down to the point our Comrex Access won't work on it. I can count on one hand the number of places we have gone where an internet connection existed and we could actually use the Access codec on it.

Generally we've had to provide our own data connection using a 3G aircard, which has been a hit and miss thing the past season. Getting a cell signal hasn't been the problem so much as getting reliable network throughput. We are trying switching providers this year to one that has deployed 4G in the hope of getting better connections.

We used to use a Marti but the receive antenna and co-ax for it was destroyed by a lightning strike last year. Replacement is pending construction of a tower behind the studio building for STL and the Marti receiver to get better line of sight. The old Marti antenna was on a tripod on the studio roof, not high enough to get good LOS from a lot of locations. We'll probably go back to the Marti on games we can get a good shot from, since it was more reliable than the Comrex. The downside is that you have to lug an antenna to the top of the press box to use it.

If you have a Barix, I'd pick up a small router that you can stick a 3G card in and hook the Barix box to (I think Cradlepoint is one such device). I would make sure to test the connection reliability first though. Order a POTS line if you can't get good 3G service, and fall back to cell audio as a last resort. You might look into getting a Marti if you can get a frequency for one. Used Marti units can be had at reasonable prices.

 

[Radiopronouncer]

I failed to mention that we have Marti equipment. That works fine for the two stadiums in town, just a short distance from our studios. There are two other high schools within the county that could work with Marti, but would require putting a Yagi in a fairly high location. The sports people prefer just using the little whip antenna, which only works for the nearby locations.

I'm not familiar with all of the game locations. One away game location that I am familiar with has the football stadium in a park, not even close to the school or any businesses.

Thanks for all the advice.

 

[whit979]

We used to utilize a TieLine 3G unit which could pull in near-FM quality audio. Not sure what one of their units retails for these days but I'd highly recommend getting the CDMA (Verizon) internals if you buy one. AT&T's network is faster, which we were using on our TieLine, but Verizon offers far more coverage and reliability of signal.

 

[317C50KW]

Depending on how the state athletic board aligns teams every two years, we find ourselves either close in or going way the heck out. One school we visited 2 seasons ago was very proud of their new stadium, located in the middle of nowhere but at least next to the new high school. The problem though was apparently a turf battle between the athletic department and the IT department as no telco or internet access was available in their hastily constructed "radio booth" (the press box was reserved for school-board members and their families/friends/hangers-on).

We had to use cell, it worked but it wasn't pretty.

Thankfully they are no longer in the same district as the one we primarily cover. Since our schools are in a major metro area we use a combination of ISDN and Bluebox, so we're spoiled.

 

[grich]

...The sports people prefer just using the little whip antenna, which only works for the nearby locations...

My answer to the sports guys would be TOUGH. Use the Yagi. Better signal and less RFI in your gear (and the neighbors). Lugging around stuff is part of the job.

Some of my clients had VHF yagis permanently installed on the schools so in many cases the sports guy would just connect the Marti to the antenna feed (in many cases the termination would be a female PL-259 mounted on a wall plate). Some of these have survived for 30 years and are still used because of the poor cell service. Some schools have agreed to allow extensions off a POTS line to be run to the broadcast area, or sometimes a digital house phone (and interfacing with the handset option on a RemoteMix Sport). All depends on the school relationship and/or local telco. Seems the closer you get to the metro areas, the worse it is.

I hate the sound of cell-phone remotes these days. Back in the AMPS days, if you have a good signal, it didn't sound too bad. Nowadays, they sound like crap even with good RF levels.

 

[Nostalgia]

We are going to try something new (to us) this year, perhaps someone out there has already done this. Its called the Home Phone Connect from Verizon. Verizon has a very good footprint in our area so should work for those away games in rural areas. This thing is a small cellular base station that emulates a land line. Does not have its own handset just a RJ11 jack on the back and an antenna. We plug a regular old telephone into it and our Flip Jack 500 into the phone. $19.99 unlimited local/LD calling. Looks pretty good on paper, we are going to get one to demo next week.

For home games probably will still use the Marti. Plan to install a fixed yagi on the back of the press box. For Techie2, before we stumbled on this verizon thing we were working on using one of our barix boxes. I would like to hear a little about how the router/cradlepoint hookup works for you.

 

[techie2]

For home games probably will still use the Marti. Plan to install a fixed yagi on the back of the press box. For Techie2, before we stumbled on this verizon thing we were working on using one of our barix boxes. I would like to hear a little about how the router/cradlepoint hookup works for you.

I just made that as a suggestion for getting 3G access to the Barix, but that's not the equipment we have. We have a Comrex Access portable unit. Last year we were using it with a Sprint USB aircard and we had lots of problems which appeared to be lack of network capacity on the Sprint side. In the few press boxes that had wired or wi-fi connections that weren't firewalled or port restricted to death, we had good solid connections. We're trying it with a Verizon 4G hotspot device this year to see if we can get better connection stability.

...The sports people prefer just using the little whip antenna, which only works for the nearby locations...

My answer to the sports guys would be TOUGH. Use the Yagi. Better signal and less RFI in your gear (and the neighbors). Lugging around stuff is part of the job.

Some of my clients had VHF yagis permanently installed on the schools so in many cases the sports guy would just connect the Marti to the antenna feed (in many cases the termination would be a female PL-259 mounted on a wall plate). Some of these have survived for 30 years and are still used because of the poor cell service. Some schools have agreed to allow extensions off a POTS line to be run to the broadcast area, or sometimes a digital house phone (and interfacing with the handset option on a RemoteMix Sport). All depends on the school relationship and/or local telco. Seems the closer you get to the metro areas, the worse it is.

I hate the sound of cell-phone remotes these days. Back in the AMPS days, if you have a good signal, it didn't sound too bad. Nowadays, they sound like crap even with good RF levels.

We cover mostly one school, so at some point are going to install a permanent yagi at that location which will take care of 5 out of 10 games. You are right about the metro areas. We are in a metro area and can't get a POTS line anywhere except at our home school site. Most places we either can't get a line installed period, or it's too expensive to be worth it for one game. Plus a lot of schools have installed these crappy VoIP systems which render our POTS codec useless anyway.

 

[grich]

One of the things about my client's Marti system is that they planned it 30 years ago to be a long-distance system. Stacked yagis on a rotor on top of a 350' tower. Most shots are 10-20 miles...farthest permanent transmit location is 37 miles away.

 

[TomT]

We bought a third station last year, and ended up with a Marti system with two repeaters and a range of (potentially) 50 miles. Has proved handy for sports--one problematical H.S. basketball court is now duck soup--2 watt 450 Marti to the van plugged in outside the gym floor, 160 to the transmitter site for the new station we bought, then a 15 mile hop on 450 again to our other station.

Still, in hill country, lots of sites we will never be able to get out of with an RPU.

 

[ChiefEngineer]

The new Verizon toy seems to be the answer for remote telephone. Designed for people with cabins and such that had no home phone capable. Many are using it as home phone service.

There are bluetooth devices that allow the same access from your cell phone. If it is blue tooth enabled the device attaches to your existing carrier and provides an rj-11 output. Similar to a docking station only requiring proximity, not docking. Saw several on ebay.

Routine 25 mile remote work is available with our 2 watt marti. Rx antenna at 120 feet. The problem is that Skype is so much easier and cleaner. We are non commercial. The computer can also control our studio computer.Easier to get rocks to learn computers sometimes.

 

[FFoti1]

A friend and I broadcast the Wickliffe High Blue Devils using a simple mixer feeding a PC running Omnia A/XE software that has an MP3 codec. The PC links back to the broadcast facility using a Verizon 3G stick. We get robust good audio quality @ 64kbps, mono.

-Frank Foti

 

[bilco]

I haven't had to do this in years but I've used a Marti to jump from the field to a fixed phone location within a few miles where I put a receiver, auto answer phone box and used it with nothing, frequency extenders or Comrex hotlines. Only works one way of course, but saved the day a few times. A 30 watt Marti with a mag mount 5/8th antenna and something similar at the receiver end can extend your reach by a bunch. Usually easy to find someplace with a phone that will let you in, either a fan, school, business that will take it as a trade or whatever. Not perfect, but beats losing the game.

 

[grich]

Been there, done that, too, in the pre-cell era. Receiver was a Bearcat crystal scanner.

Still skeptical about going all-in with skype or similar stuff on the wild internet for a long-form program out where my clients are.

I could have a situation soon where I might try some sort of Internet streaming for a church broadcast...need decent BW to make the music sound OK. Both church and the station use the same telco ISP, so I would think reliability would be enhanced.

 

[TomT]

Since you can't have field crew monitor off air due to the delay, someone must carry a cell phone so you can tell them that they are off the air.

 

[rew]

I have had good luck using Audio Compass on a laptop and an aircard. I use AT&T and Sprint. If one card wont work then usually the other one will. Still carry a cellphone on another carrier with us for a backup and if we are far off and cant hear our station off air I dial up the station on the cellphone and have the board op just put it on hold. That way we can monitor the station over the cellphone.I can patch it into the headphones if the sportscasters want to hear it. This system is far from perfect. We have done games that went perfect and the same place next week had several dropouts. You just never know what is going to happen on a remote broadcast.. That sound like a good start for another topic.

Robert

 

[stephend2]

we are going to try out audiocompass navigator this year. We used skype last year but found it unpredictable. the p2p nature of skype would become an issue sometimes, would have to drop and reconnect to get decent quality.

tried barix with cradlepoint router before, worked sometimes. We go to several schools that have internet access at the field, most of them just have a standard DSL account in there, our home stadiums have ethernet dropped from them and a network that is not restricted on outbound connections.

We had some issues with the studio internet connection in the past, since then we have moved. studio is now on the wireless ISP that is my day job and that I have built with my own hands. we're seeing 12m/5m, 30-40ms ping times a lot of places and 1-3ms jitter.