Louis Vuitton America’s Cup

June 21st, 2017

35th America's Cup, on-board cameras and RF services by Timeline Television

Over the past two years the world’s best sailors have been competing in the Louis Vuitton America’s Cup World Series, racing foiling, wing-sailed 45ft catamarans at venues around the globe. The event now culminates in the Great Sound in Bermuda,  where sailors are competing in more powerful 50ft yachts to claim the 35th America’s Cup, the oldest trophy in international sport.

Timeline is thrilled to be working with the America’s Cup Event Authority (ACEA), providing RF facilities and bespoke on-board cameras for this prestigious sailing event.

For the America’s Cup Match, Timeline is providing each yacht with four remotely controlled agile cameras mounted on the aft horn, port and starboard beam and bowsprit, augmented by three fixed point-of-view (POV) cameras on the port and starboard hull, and under-slung on the bowsprit. A live body-worn camera integrated into the helmsman’s clothing, four crew radio mics and four cabled mics around each yacht complete the set-up, offering viewers the most immersive live TV spectacle in sport.

Additional RF facilities include live radio links from two helicopters, a Chase Boat, a Committee Boat and a live drone,  as well as two land-based hand-held radio cameras.

Timeline also provides RF spectrum management to ACEA at all America’s Cup venues around the world. In Bermuda this required the licensing of twenty vision channels, six IP telemetry channels, nineteen radio-mic channels, twenty-two UHF radio-talkback channels and four UHF telemetry channels.

Much like Formula 1 cars, the America’s Cup yachts have design parameters to include TV infrastructure.  Timeline’s custom-made yacht systems, including remotely controlled mixers, transmitters and telemetry control for the cameras, are housed in an integrated media bay near the mast base, while a space is available for Timeline to mount a custom-made carbon-fibre enclosure at the top of the wing-sail. This unit includes filtering, RF power amplifier and antenna, and gives Timeline a great launching point for the RF signal back to shore, helping to optimise the RF path and provide extremely reliable pictures.

Read more about the 35th America’s Cup here: https://www.americascup.com/en/home.html

Find out about Timeline’s RF Services.