The importance of good audio! Always a problem at such an event
as the ISDS World Sheep Dog Trials and any sheep dog trial for that
matter!
The most important moment my father was looking forward to was setting
up his mic on the handlers post using an underground wire he was going to
insert using a little gadget he had had made by our neighbor in Canada and
had carefully stowed in our luggage. (It was made of a shovel handle that
was attached to a little 6-inch plow blade that had a place where the wire
could be fed through and put into the ground before we stamped the ground
back into place.) It was a very nifty little thing that dad was itching
to use as soon as we unpacked it on Tuesday. So, finally we talked to the
owner of the 4-wheeler in the booth area and asked him to use his bike to
tow the plow thing from the fence to the handler’s post. He came and attached
it to the back of the bike and (with quite a few spectators) dad proudly plowed
his little wire into the ground. I think the effect of this little gadget
actually working was enough to impress the spectators and they moved off
after dad had reached his destination. (Jim Cropper exclaimed, “ Are you
going to plough the whole bloody field, Martin?)
Once in the ground and everyone had cleared off, dad and I were left to
test out the mic. Dad pulled out his camera and headphones as I went and
plugged in the mic at the post. I didn’t make it too far back to dad before
he ripped off the headphones and said, “ What the heck is that!” I didn’t
really understand, so he proceeded to describe what he was hearing in the
headphones instead of the usual noise I was making in the mic. Dad had
successfully picked up the local Irish radio station that was airing the
Football game live from someplace. Well, this didn’t go over too well, as
you can imagine. I felt quite bad for dad because he was so excited about
it, then to have that come of it. I don’t think I have heard him say, “That’s
incredible…just…incredible”, (in a shocked and somewhat bewildered voice) so
many times in my life. So, we had to resort to the normal practice of taping
the shot gun mic to the post in front of the handlers area and the fence line
about 40 yards from the handlers post. Then extended with the useful shovel
handle from his gadget so that the mic could be at least 2 feet closer and
off the wire on the fence. Poor dad, but we made it through okay.
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