Pioneers of freedive broadcasting

Once upon a time. Actually three weeks ago. There was a small house and there sit three friends. They were sitting around shisha - puffing and thinking (more puffing than thinking). "Hey, we are organizing the National Championship in Freediving, it´s asking for something special", the first one said. The second came up with an idea: "What about the cheerleaders?". "Bullshit", the third one said. So they sit and smoked .... and smoked. "Let´s make a live coverage of the event. Such as the Olympics on TV", suddenly all of them blurted out. And as they said, they did. Well, almost. This is their story. Story of the pioneers of the live broadcasting from freediving events.

Chapter One: Any Idea?

The idea was on the table, but how to turn it to reality? Simply. Let´s buy some IP cameras and connect them to the net. Google it! ..... Oops! IP cameras cost too much. "Do you think someone will lend us the cameras?", the first one said. "We don´t think so", the others said. Hmmmm "Shisha is halas", the first one said. "I will load it again then", the second one said. "And why can´t we connect the normal cameras into the broadcast controller and via PC to the net?" the third one said. Bingooo! We have the cameras = we can borrow them. We have the broadcast controller = we can borrow it. And we have the stream broadcast capacity = well, hopefully, someone will sponsor it. "And how will we get the cameras under water?", all of them questioned.

Chapter Two: Drown the camera!

There are UW boxes for cameras, all of them knew it. They are smart guys. The problem was how to get the cable from the waterproof box to the broadcast control on the surface? "Someone will definitely let us make a nice hole into his precious and expensive UW box", the first one said. "Bullshit", said the others. Maybe there is somewhere any profesional system, someone must have invented it already. Google it! .... Oops! There is one. And only one in the whole world - in the U.S. and it was used twice, and only for the Olympics. "Do you think we can get it for the Czech National Championship? ... for free?!" the first one asked. "Bullshit", the others replied. So it has to be home made. "Let´s call the fourth one. He is an engineer, he will figure something out", the first one suggested. And as they said, they did. And the fourth one figured it out. They bought a plastic barrel for the liquid chemicals transportation and plexiglass. They cut the front panel of the barrel, and glued the plexiglass to it... and after that they found out that the barrel has capacity of 20 liters and therefeore they will need a LOT of lead weights.

Chapter Three: Test

The weight of 24 kg did the job and the barrel sank. First empty. And then the D day came - the day of the first test with the camera inside. Main characters: barrel, 24kg weight, borrowed camera, and pretty nervous crew. Instructions: insert the tape into the camera, put the camera into the barrel, screw the barrel, f...ck, unscrew the barrel, turn on the camera, screw up the barrel, attach the weight, drop the barrel into the water and .... insalah. Oops! The weights fell off and hit the bottom of the pool ... pretty hard, but the pool tiles survived. Better knob was needed for the second try. The masterpiece of home made engineering was nicely sinking under water. First nervous looks through the plexiglass showed that there was no water inside = borrowed camera was safe. After 30 minutes we took the device out of the water. A moment of truth .... no water inside and the camera was still running. But the recorded material was a dissapointment. First few minutes were ok but then the lens got misty and the pics looked like as if taken from old, dirty, shitty lake.

We have a week until another test and we have to figure out how to get rid of the moisture inside the barell. Maybe rice? or flour? Any idea? We will see ... in a week.