[BC] Fortune rewards the prepared

[Tom Taggart]

Caution: Beware the Luddite..he bites..

Already had a few commenters suggest using some kind of
wireless broadband/internet etc. connection.

With these playoff tournament game, we don't know until the
Sunday before the following weekend where the game is going
to be played, and when.  For example, after Wirt County won
Friday, their next opponent was determined by the
Wahama-East Hardy game played Saturday afternoon.  If East
Hardy won, we would have to travel to Moorefield, in the
eastern panhandle of West Virginia, a five hour drive.
Interestingly, we would have a phone line there, courtesy of
a local station we've worked with in the past. As it
happened, Wahama won, and, (listening to the 6 o'clock news)
our game is at Point Pleasant on Friday. 

I took some dramatic license and didn't mention that we've
already done another tournament game at Pt. Pleasant--on
cell.  For cell, a good clean signal, no "swimming."  We are
going to make sure we have a second phone there in case they
loose signal--it's too far away to hear the station there. 

During the regular season we do about half our games on
Marti, half on regular (wired) phone lines.  On the Marti
receiver I have an ART eq that chops off that annoying hiss
you get unless the transmitter is right under the tower. On
the phone feeds I use a 424 for leveling and another ART eq
to sweeten the sound. Most of the lines we get have a decent
low end, without hum; and the "high" end just rolls
off--they've pulled the filters years ago when dial-up
modems became common.

It's not a high fidelity sound, but most of our game
broadcasts don't sound like the typical thin "telephone"
sound on lots of other small-market broadcasts. 

Sure, a Comrex or Tie-Line would be nice, but they add
another layer of complexity.  Another problem is I have
sports guys running the broadcast.  Indeed, one of the
stations in town uses a Comrex, but they usually sound
"clipped" since they hit the box too hard. Having no desire
to run around  and hold hands every Friday night, I opt for
the simple, reliable POTS connection.