s2h - 2007 Sydney to Hobart Race HF Comms Broadcast

s2h - 2007 Sydney to Hobart Race HF Comms Broadcast

Post by AussieDrifte » Sun, 30 Dec 2007 21:20:52

G'day All,

This year I solely attempted, with the free and brilliant services of USTREAM.TV attempted to broadcast the 2007 Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race
HF Comms (http://ustream.tv/channel/sydney-hobart-yacht-race---hf-comms-6516--4...).  I've got few recordings stored / linked on my Blog
(http://aussiedrifter.blogspot.com) which you are more than welcome to have a listen too and more than welcome to provide feedback on :)

The broadcast was mostly successfully except there was the following issues:

1. Semi poor HF propagations (QTH was Brisbane, towards the end JBW and lead yach were faint, but still audible).

2. from 1200 utc a Asian / Koren Broadcast started on 6518 khz which killed the  Primary race Freq of 6516khz.  The ICom R75 tried its bst
to filter and pass band out the interrence but it was still fairly a pain in the ARSE (ASS).

3. I caught a fair bit of the action and recorded several yacht retirees, but since I was solely monitoring the frequencies I could'nt do it
24x7 and obviously missed a couple of NEWS worthy items such as a couple of crew members getting injured and Skandia's Mast incident.

What I'm hoping is that for next years race or any other major Yacht Races or any Events round the world that use HF Comms, that a network
of receivers can be set up and broadcast via USTREAM.TV from multiple locations. Such as for Sydney to Hobart we could have at least one /
more receivers located at :

  1 Brisbane,
  2 Sydney,
  3 Melbourne,
  4 Adelaide
  5 Tasmania (Launceston / Hobart)

This way if HF propagation is poor or bad, one of the broadcaster will hopefully still broadcast better than the others.  These broadcast
will be made available to the public for the interest of hearing the HF Comms.

Obviously the next Sydney to Hobart is now another 12 months away, and a lot can happen, but I would like to know which people think of
providing this service for free as SWL is our hobby :) and we love it.  Who would possibly be interested / committed to providing such
service to people all over th world via the web :)

As well as this I would like to get comments from those of you who may have tuned in if there was anything I may / could have done better :)

Regards
Mark

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Location: Canberra Australia
Radio: Icom R75 with DSP options
Antenna: Cliff Dweller 2
Website: http://aussiedrifter.blogspot.com/

Listen Live via USTREAM.TV:
  http://www.ustream.tv/channel/aussiedrifter-live-shortwave-listening
  http://ustream.tv/channel/sydney-hobart-yacht-race---hf-comms-6516--4...