Olaf Boettcher Pole

[jdarwin]

Anyone have some good pictures of this pole? Thanks in advance.

[Horton]

@jdarwin WTF?

[jdarwin]

@OB1 - take a pic and send to me. Seems to be the only way USAWS will give an exemption to use boat video judging.

[jdarwin]

@Horton - it's a pole that mounts to the front of the towboat to which you attach a camera to record/view slalom and trick - judging.

[Edbrazil]

Sure good for trick judging: not too high or low, so can see ski position and clearance.

And, OK for Slalom buoy judging, but very questionable for close gate calls.

[thager]

I was so hoping for some kind of dancing pole but then it would probably be called the @Shane Hill pole.

[ntx]

@jdarwin they have used it at the can am challenge in Illinois for many years. Dave Clarke was always there to set it up. It always worked great but is not a system that you would move between boats. They used a single boat for the entire tournament. Set up looked to be pretty time consuming with a ton of trial and error during practice the day before. I will look thru some pics to see if I have any decent photos. If I can find anything I will forward them to you.

[LeonL]

I thought it was some polish guy doing something special on a ski.

[Moskier3ev]

Joe, skinxs may have a picture of the set up, it has been used it at Can-Am in Jerseyville. Dave Clark was the person who set it up when I was there.

 

Jeff Lindsey

[Moskier3ev]

Sorry I did not see NTX post.

 

jeff

[skiinxs]

@jdarwin It has been refined at Lodi (site of CanAm) the last couple years by using an RC airplane remote control to control the tracking servo. All we need to do is find a kid who is good at video games to control the camera position from shore. This works much better as skiers who get slack at the buoys would cause the rope controlled camera to sometimes not track wide enough. Kevin actually has all of the parts to build a second pole, which will allow us to use more than one boat. I would take too long to swap the setup to a different boat with only one pole. We will have this built and utilize both during our two C/E/L/R tournaments July 4th weekend. We used hand-held videos last fall during our C tournament for tricks and swapped cards, but will utilize telemetry from the poles for tricks and hand hold the cameras to make the angle a little lower than the poles. I have lots of photos at my server up at the lake and will look up a couple to send to you this weekend.

[skiinxs]

@jdarwin This was the 2012 version, the current version is about 4' shorter. I will get more current photos to you this weekend.

 

[jdarwin]

@skiinxs - this was recommended to me in lieu of hand held for slalom judging. Sounds like a lot of work and still requires human input (control camera position from shore). We've used a hand held camera w/ wireless the last couple of years with no issue but the powers-that-be believe the "pole" option is preferable. Not sure why. Again, this is for slalom only. I can see the benefit in tricks of having a higher camera position.

 

Why don't we just have a drone follow the skier. Each skier is required to have a chip attached to their vest and the drone follows them thru the course and sends a video of the pass to judges on shore.....I'm just kidding but it would not surprise me if the day is coming...

[oldjeep]

Seems like a good reason to have a tower on the towboat, so that there is an easier way to attach the camera mount. Or does it really have to be mounted that far forward?

[jdarwin]

@skiinxs - thanks for the photo. Wow, that's quite a set up. Begs the question: if the camera has to be 4-8' above the waterline to adequately judge the slalom pass, shouldn't the boat judge be at that same height to determine same? (sarcasm). Simply illustrating the absurdity of the lengths we go to simply judge a slalom pass when there are easier (and less costly) means to achieve.

[skiinxs]

@jdarwin I believe that it is because you are also replacing the tower judges where there are some fairly rigid requirements about height above the water. It is interesting that only the driver has visibility of the water in front of and directly beside the boat, since the tower judges are all on the shore looking at big monitors and the boat judge is looking back at the skier. We had an instance a few years ago where a duck was flying into the skier path and distracted her, but none of the judges saw it. The driver had to speak up and verify that there was a duck there.

[Wish]

I would not want my camera on top of that. Wow.

[jdarwin]

@skiinxs - I would love to see a video clip using the pole and compare to hand-held. My gut tells me there are advantages/disadvantages to both. IMO, having a competent camera person in the boat seems preferable over having some Beaver Knievel manipulating a joystick.

[bigtex2011]

cant wait to be at your tourney. cant you just take the pole out of your living room and float it out to 3 ball and attach a keg to it with a smoke machine and have motley crue basting in the background. xo chris

[skiinxs]

@darwin I may have some video saved from the tournament DVR on my PC up at the lake. I will take a look this weekend. Do you have a server I could FTP to if I find some? (Too big to email) It would be the four channel video showing boat camera, both gate cameras and end course.

[jdarwin]

@skiinxs - I have an FTP site I use at work but not available for receipt of personal information. Perhaps youtube? I know that degrades the quality somewhat but it's the perspective I'm after - not necessarily the quality.

[jdarwin]

@bigtex2011 - anything for you, Chris. You're my hero, Big Spray :)

[bigtex2011]

@jdarwin :) blanking disaster

[klindy]

@jdarwin I have some pics of the pole too. And I've been at CanAm's several times so I'm familiar with the set up. I see if I can find the pics.

 

You and I have talked about this before but it's amazing that a boat video is REQUIRED to confirm a World Record and there are no specifications as to height, etc. So it's "good enough" for that, yet it can't be used for judging purposes. Seems odd...

[klindy]

 

[jdarwin]

@klindy - thanks for the pics. I hope @teammalibu doesn't see this fine engineering....he'll have a stroke!!

 

Yes, it seems USAWS/IWWF practice selective indignation when it come to video for judging vs. video to approve world records. Perhaps if they created a good STANDARD for video, this wouldn't be an issue. My biggest issue with mounting a fixed camera to a pole is that the zoom becomes useless. Therefore, the camera aspect is the same for 15-off and 41-off. And, at east/west sites, the sun can become an issue early/late in the day. Hardly preferable. I would rather have the camera in the hands of a capable operator who can manage the zoom based on line length and the back-light function for dark/light settings. In the end, I'm a firm believer that video feed from the boat is FAR superior to tower judging due to the view afforded the judges and the ability to review each pass if needed. There have been far too many bad calls from towers over the years. And yet, it remains the standard.