F1 Cars are really noisey!

Location
Albert Park
Equipment
Zoom F4
Sennheiser MKH 60
Boom Pole array
and
R09 handheld
AKG D112

Well today in some ways made up for Avalon not being quite what I had hoped it would be. The Melbourne F1 Grand Prix is on this weekend and today was a day for some F1 practise as well as some of the other cars doing some short race events. I hadn’t planned much on going down there, but when we woke up and could here the cars from our apartment I thought it might be worth taking a look and see what was happening today. Because I hadn’t organised prior media access I just needed to get a ticket and go in normally like everyone else, which was hardly the end of the world, it would just limit where I could go once I got in.

I captured a little bit of material at the end of a GT race, I got some fairly good material of some Porches, Lotus, BMW’s and I think maybe a Ferrari. A guy showed me the program and told me there was going to be a BlackHawk Helicopter demonstration in about half an hour so I headed over to where they had one parked just in time for its pre launch prep. I managed to capture a clean full power up and take off sequence which I was really happy about, especially so since the BlackHawks at Avalon had been a total disaster with all the crap music and commentary going on. This time the helicopter was on a patch a grass miles from anyone or any noise with only a few guy standing around waiting to take photos, so it was a great opportunity. Later on I managed to capture a fair bit of good material as two BlackHawks did their manoeuvres.

UH60 Black Hawk

After that I caught some more Army gear as they had brought along their hotted up Land Rover. This thing is insane; six wheels, all supper slick racing tyres and rims, and a 7 litre super charged Chev engine that sounds like thunder. I got a good deal of material from this and also talked to the guys in charge about possibly organising to visit them in the future and get some samples of it actually on the track, so keep an eye out for that one. Mixed in with all this for some reason the local maintenance guys were trimming some trees. I guess maybe it was for safety on the weekend, but either way I even got to record some chain saw sounds, the guy seemed fairly keen to help out to so I got a few extra revs as he was working which was great. Thanks Mr. chain saw guy!

The Army goes zooom!

Then we got the F1s. Bloody hell but they are loud! I tried different positions and also used my D112 mic which is specifically designed to deal with high output sounds. Obviously all I could ever capture was the sound of an F1 flying past at crazy speeds, and some general race ambience. I am going to need to be a lot more influential before I’ll get an opportunity to attach a mic to one of those beasties, but I did get some good material today, far more than I was originally expecting. Every day I go out recording its almost impossible to predict the outcome. I guess I just need to get out as often as possible and hope for the best.