Day 2 at the Daytona Speedway

So, here's the gig. They bring in 4 techs to start the process of getting all of our stuff ready for the race. The Sportvision truck has to be rewired for some of the new stuff we're doing so we spend much of the day wiring up the racks in the truck. It's hard to explain just what that entails. Here's photo or 2 to help with the explanation


The photo above shows the back of the main rack - actually just a portion of it. There's a walkway behind the racks so you can wire and rewire all of the components that are in the rack.


The photo above shows just one of the bays in the rack. You can see how there's an unbelievable number of wires just coming in and out of this one bay.

Today we also finished with the installation of 4 antennaes and base stations on top of the roof of the main grandstands. There's a little bit of seating up on the roof that's mainly for the spotters for each crew that's racing. The top of the roof will also be where approximately 6 TV cameras will be set up. We will have our equipment (the same equipment that we use in football) on 3 of those rooftop cameras.
You can see one of the camera platforms and the seating for the spotters in the photo below.


One of the things about all of these sports venues that I get to visit - that really appeals to me is the structure and architecture. Most of the football stadiums that I visited are made of concrete and steel. I'm not an engineer of any type, but the combination of concrete and steel is an amazing thing. Concrete has tremendous compression resistance and steel has tremendous tensile strength. When you combine the 2 together (like you see on an average interstate overpass) you get amazing strength. I've always thought it pretty cool the way they put this to use in stadiums so that they can allow for the combination of unobstucted views on the 'field' side and lots of room for people to walk on the 'outside and under' the stadium.
So, I find it interesting the way they decided to build the Daytona Raceway. It's all steel girders. This type of construction is plenty strong of course - but does not allow for lots of room for people to move around under the seating. I walked up the steps to the grandstands today and was amazed at the difference in feel compared to a football stadium.

It could be because of the year that the Daytona Speedway was built (1958) - this is simply the construction method of choice.

Here's a photo of the girders from ground level looking up.


Yesterday, I posted about the size of the television compound at this event. I took the photo below from the roof today and it does not have all the trucks in it. This is what it takes to get these races to television and the internet. Pretty amazing.