Women’s Marathon – and bad pictures at the start

I had to be at work at about 6:30 for a technical check about that time. I got in just after 6:15. We had just got our fixed wing plane up, and were trying to get out Helicopters up – 6 of them. The camera men had not arrived, and they were trying to decide if to stay on the ground or leave before the fog closed in. In the end they decided to wait, which would prove disastrous for us. The fog closed into bankstown and closed the airport.

We checked the ground equipment – 4 bikes and a lead car, and they worked OK from the Aircraft so we nervously sent the plane to Mascot for fuel. About 8:10 we then found the fog a bit clearer, and got the opportunity to get the Helicopters out. But it was too early and we did not want to re-fuel during the marathon… So we just sent up one of the videocamera helicopters – to fly to North Head to refuel before the race. By the time we got anyone to say OK to get the others in the air the airport closed again.

We got the Helo and the Plane over the race at 8:45 as required – and the pictures were OK… Sometimes the pictures coming from the ground vehicles through the plane were not perfect, but it was better than nothing. The plane at 14,000 ft was there just to replay the signals, and used the system that I was in charge of to navigate and stay over the race.

We also need to change the frequency of one of the motorcycles from 1994 MHz to 2016 MHz borrowing a frequency from Sailing so that we would not be hit by interference by Channel 9 with one of their fixed links getting into the plane.

As the race started there was a bit of breakup of pictures because of the way we were working. We were feeling pretty bad when my mother rang me and asked if we knew the picture on TV was breaking up a lot…

We had some good news at 9:10. The Helos had taken off and would be on site within 10 minutes. This was great news. When they arrived about 9:20 the pictures improved and things were fantastic.