PSSI Global Services is heading into a busy holiday weekend. As a company proud to employ many former military service members, we would like to wish all of our friends, co-workers, and customers a safe and happy Memorial Day.
Senior engineer Dave Buckman will be at the heart of the weekend’s festivities as he transmits the National Memorial Day Concert, live from the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol. Dave does this esteemed event for us every year, and we’ll be back on the Fourth of July as well to provide transmission services for that holiday’s concert.
It’s NBA Finals time, and we will have multiple trucks in the Bay Area providing production and transmission services for the games and all the surrounding hoopla. We have a caravan of trucks heading north from Los Angeles to Oakland, where we will be providing multi-camera productions and transmissions for ESPN and NBA TV at locations throughout the city. Later in the week, Fox will have us in Jack London Square for a special NBA Finals coverage. The longer the series lasts, the longer we’ll be there providing total NBA Finals coverage. We’re looking forward to a great series!
There’s also plenty of golf to go around. Joe Cox is finishing up a long run of Golf Channel coverage down at the Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth, Texas, before heading home to Las Vegas for a few days off. Craig Henry is hitting it hard as well, squeezing in a Top Rank Boxing match in Chicago Friday night in between the NCAA women’s and men’s golf tournaments in nearby Sugar Grove, Illinois.
Up the road in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Steve Hagerty is taking a breather from his regular Ku-band truck to run C23 at the Travis Pointe Country Club for Golf Channel’s coverage of the Volvik Championship. Steve is one of many of our engineers who are dual threats — equally proficient in C-band and Ku-band transmissions.
Count Massachusetts-based Mike Howley among that esteemed group of dual-threat engineers. He’s finishing up a great week of golf coverage at Trump National Golf Club in Potomac Falls, Viginia, before he gets a well-deserved couple of days off until the next big sporting event.
Todd Harvey is down in Tallahassee, Florida, for ESPN’s coverage of the NCAA Softball Super Regionals. Mr. Harvey is sending up seven multiplexed paths back to ESPN headquarters in Connecticut where they’re producing the show for broadcast. From there Harvey joins Rick Ball up in Detroit, Michigan, for another multichannel transmission. This one’s for NASCAR’s IMSA series at Belle Isle Park.
Yet another multichannel transmission is taking place across the country in Eugene, Oregon. Seattle-based engineer David Meyer is transmitting a single-path world feed of the IAAF Diamond League track and field competition live from the University of Oregon. On the other half of the satellite’s transponder, David is handling a four-channel multiplexed transmission of various interviews and tape feeds. This is an exciting international event, and we’re proud to be partnering with our friends from Mobile Links, a transmission company based in Sweden that we often work with overseas.
As a matter of fact, we’re in Stockholm this weekend, as well! Senior engineer Tracy Michaels and senior project manager Keith Valeri are at the Ericsson Globe in Stockholm providing international distribution of UFC Fight Night 28. Our UFC team is embarking on a demanding and exciting international schedule that has them in Brazil next weekend for a major pay-per-view, UFC 212.
Finally, we want to take another opportunity to recognize our great maintenance and support staff. Nick Dailey, Norm Bearce and AJ Miceli took it upon themselves this week to install brand new air conditioners in one of our premier trucks, the CK25. They had their work cut out for them, from rewiring to repainting to make it all look perfect. They finished just as our driver was arriving in Orlando to take the truck north to Ohio for its next job. Thanks to their efforts, our dual-dish mobile teleport will be ice cold while performing extraordinary transmission feats all summer long. Thanks, guys!