Our work with cable camera suppliers, isn't something we're all that well known for, but it's certainly become something we're doing more and more of. It all started with the London Olympics back in 2012 and since then we've developed a solid reputation within that sector, working at various golf events, at the Cheltenham Festival and at other sporting occasions, doing what we do best – providing a great service while at the same time being as unobtrusive as possible.
As a rule, when cable camera systems are installed, they quite often use mobile cranes – and for short events like The Grand National for example, this is the right solution – two mobile cranes with the cameras running at high level.
For longer running events, however, having mobile cranes, crews and booms in the air 24 hours a day is an extremely costly solution. The alternative to this is to put in towers – whether that's truss towers, crane towers, or even attaching to buildings – and that's where we at Unusual seem to have developed a workable system.
Take Cheltenham as an example – here we attached to a building and a crane tower. First we had to work out how high the tower needs to be by liaising with the camera people. Then we have to figure out the logistics of how to build it – in the time available and with the ground available. Next we look at customising it – adding bits such as an operating/ maintenance platform and truss to attach the pulleys to the tops of the towers.
As mentioned previously, the ground conditions are a major influencing factor – it has to be strong enough to build the tower on. The advantage of crane towers is that they can be secured with a ballasted base – no need for guy ropes – so we take up less of a footprint. Aluminium towers need guy ropes and are generally more expensive to build.
At Cheltenham, City Lifting is our partner on the project. They provided a cross base and a tower – the ballasted base of which is 3-4m across. That solves the problem of space and, though we could arguably do the same thing in truss, it has a much bigger footprint. The tower crane turns up on a lorry and is assembled in half a day.
This is a very different aspect to the work we do at Unusual, but is an area which we are excited to develop. We are looking forward to working on a very British sporting event this summer...we hope to share details of that with you very soon.
As a rule, when cable camera systems are installed, they quite often use mobile cranes – and for short events like The Grand National for example, this is the right solution – two mobile cranes with the cameras running at high level.
For longer running events, however, having mobile cranes, crews and booms in the air 24 hours a day is an extremely costly solution. The alternative to this is to put in towers – whether that's truss towers, crane towers, or even attaching to buildings – and that's where we at Unusual seem to have developed a workable system.
Take Cheltenham as an example – here we attached to a building and a crane tower. First we had to work out how high the tower needs to be by liaising with the camera people. Then we have to figure out the logistics of how to build it – in the time available and with the ground available. Next we look at customising it – adding bits such as an operating/ maintenance platform and truss to attach the pulleys to the tops of the towers.
As mentioned previously, the ground conditions are a major influencing factor – it has to be strong enough to build the tower on. The advantage of crane towers is that they can be secured with a ballasted base – no need for guy ropes – so we take up less of a footprint. Aluminium towers need guy ropes and are generally more expensive to build.
At Cheltenham, City Lifting is our partner on the project. They provided a cross base and a tower – the ballasted base of which is 3-4m across. That solves the problem of space and, though we could arguably do the same thing in truss, it has a much bigger footprint. The tower crane turns up on a lorry and is assembled in half a day.
This is a very different aspect to the work we do at Unusual, but is an area which we are excited to develop. We are looking forward to working on a very British sporting event this summer...we hope to share details of that with you very soon.