Tour d’Azerbaidjan is an international bicycle race that takes place annually in Azerbaijan and is part of the UCI Europe Tour. Over the years Broadcast Solutions has supported Baku Media Center with production vehicles — including a Streamline S16 OB van and DSNG vehicle, built by the German company – as well as production support with camera motorcycles, helicopters and planes, special camera systems and additional staff to support the production.

At this year’s Tour d’Azerbaidjan, Broadcast Solutions supported the production with a team of engineers and directors that have special expertise in covering bicycle races. They made arrangements for live wireless aerial video transmission links as well as set up additional means, such as motorcycles and an airplane, to bring the coverage home to viewers. This included a specialized team that covered the race via a helicopter with a Cineflex camera system.

There were also a lot of lessons learned from past years. In 2015 the production setup consisted of motorcycles at the racetrack and a helicopter that transmitted the video signals using RF uplink to the airplane. This year the airplane again covered the downlink of the signals to a receiving point at the finish line – a 30m crane. Then the signal was processed in the OB Van located at the finish. A further task was to ensure the seamless integration of the RF signals into the production truck located at the finish line.

This was done by integration of the RF equipment in the back of the HD OB truck. Over the years production setups have changed from one event to the other where Broadcast Solutions was responsible for the integration of additional equipment into the production chain (OB Van, DSNG, helicopter, motorcycles, etc.) to ensure a seamless workflow.