AVS Supports FISA World Rowing Championships With Cineflex-Equipped Vehicles, Comms

For only the second time in the FISA World Rowing Championships’ 55-year history, the week-long international event was contested in the United States. Aerial Video Systems (AVS) was on the ground in Sarasota, FL, from September 24 to October 2, providing facilities and supporting NEP’s coverage of the event.

AVS deployed a Smart Car and Polaris Crew equipped with RF Cineflex systems to cover the event.

AVS provided two follow vehicles with on-board RF Cineflex systems, as well as a jib and two RF handheld camera links from chase boats. The company also supplied communications for all the moving pieces.

Throughout the event at Nathan Benderson Park in Sarasota, FL, AVS faced the challenge of running its follow vehicles on a 1,600-meter single-lane floating road parallel to the course with a 3,000-pound weight limit.

“Many of these rowing venues they have a road next to them. This one doesn’t,” says AVS President Randy Hermes. “It has a floating bridge actually that runs the length of the course… We used a Smart Car with a Cineflex on the roof and, [with] an operator and a driver, that satisfied the weight restriction for that. The second car also had to have a jib, so it had a jib, a jib operator, a Cineflex, a camera operator, and a driver, and it all had to be less than 3,000 pounds, so we used a Polaris Crew vehicle.”

In total, NEP deployed 18 cameras to cover the event for the World Rowing Federation, FISA (Fédération Internationale des Sociétés d’Aviron), including 13 hard cameras, four RF cameras, and one drone. In addition to NEP’s TS2 A and B unit on site, AVS traveled its own 53-ft. mobile unit to Sarasota to manage the various video paths and communications.

“The facility was awesome,” says Hermes. “The facility, the people, everything – it was one of those shows where everything came together and just worked perfectly.”