The Motorbike Archives

David is the link man, transporting us, with a smoothness born of long practice, from gambling to gambolling. So now the picture on the monitor swells, fills our own screens, and Murray Walker takes up the story from the scrambles circuit.

BUT wait! Ever wanted to do an Alice-through-the-looking-glass act, to find out what is going on behind that television screen? Well, O.K.; come on—and watch out for flying glass as you dive through the picture.

Now we really are at Hawk-stone Park. And what a lot of vans the B.B.C. has brought along, just to put on one little part of one afternoon's programme.

Packed together in a roped-off paddock alongside the starting area, they look well capable of transporting the whole of Bertram Mills' Circus. But what are they all for? Brian Johnson, the outside-broadcast producer in charge of this section of Grandstand, explains.

"For a start, there is no power line at a scrambles venue, so we need a generator van. Then there is the control van with its banks of monitor screens —the nerve centre of the whole operation.

"Other vans bring the cables and the cameras to the circuit. Still another provides the sound link, for the commentary goes over a specially-laid G.P.O. cable direct to the London studio.'

"On this occasion, in addition to four conventional cameras, we are using a radio camera—the equivalent of a walkie-talkie—from which pictures are transmitted direct to yet another van, which receives them on its own aerial and feeds them into the main control van.

"That van with the saucer-shape aerial on the roof is sending out the final picture by radio, but that is by no means the end of it.

"Between Hawkstone and the Sutton Coldfield transmitter (from where the picture is sent to London by land line) lies the Wrekin. Radio waves cannot penetrate that massive hill, so we have yet another van up on the Wrekin, to pick up our pictures and re-transmit them to Sutton Coldfield."

Complicated, isn't it! Planning for a winter season of scrambles broadcasts can begin as early as Easter, with the B.B.C. working closely with A.C.U. liaison officer Harold Taylor. Say there are ten dotes to fill. Obviously, the A.C.U. must arrange for permits to be issued, but detail organization is left to the clubs.

Perhaps six weeks before the date of a broadcast, Brian Johnson and Harold Taylor will survey the selected circuit. Very probably some alterations will be needed, for a good course from a spectator's angle may not be so good when seen through the TV camera.

As he walks around, Brian is thinking of possible camera locations—and, indeed, of how many cameras will be required to cover the circuit adequately. The organizing club will have been asked to make available a rider or two, so that some idea of the possibilities can be gained.

Says Johnson: "I must seek out a feature which will make for spectacle—a hill, or a jump. But though some riders claim that we make them ride through a boggy patch deliberately, that isn't so.

"Our aim is to give the viewers close racing. Another criticism, this time from viewers, is that we tend to focus on the leaders to the exclusion of the remainder of the field.

"Well, a chap standing by the crowd ropes can watch the leaders go by —and until they come round again he has ample time to concentrate on the mid-field scrapping. But the viewer at home is travelling with the race; that's the fundamental difference. He is, as it were, in five places at once.

'Another thing. Sequence is important. In the control van, I switch from Camera 1 to Camera 2, then to Camera 3.

To pick up a midfield shot I would have to switch back to another camera, and that could well throw the commentator out of his stride."

But now it is race-day, and though there are still a couple of hours before transmission time, the camera men, in their grey anoraks, are all at their posts.

Johnson makes good use of the practice period, and from his desk in the control van he issues a stream of instructions.►