VDC Trading providing cable for RG Jones’s Wimbledon upgrade

VDC Trading, manufacturer of Van Damme cabling, has recently supplied RG Jones Sound Engineering with over 2km of Brown Series Star Quad Multicore Cable in August for the reconfiguration and relocation of some of the audio systems at The All England Lawn Tennis Club – home to the annual Wimbledon championships.

In total, VDC has supplied many kilometers of Black, Purple and Brown series multicores and several drums of FST for use on the permanent installation on the site. These are the cables used during the Championships for the delivery of PA and umpire announcements and interfacing signals with the BBC for TV broadcast.

In addition to the installation cables, VDC has also supplied custom made ‘umbilical’ cables for use on the umpire chairs at Wimbledon. These comprise 16 pair Green Series cable terminated with VDC’s own design VDM connectors at each end. Alongside the multicore there are 4 x tour-grade Van Damme TourCat CAT5 cables and a 3×1.5mm power cable. The entire, flexible, solution is enclosed in a black pliosil sleeve and used to relay data to the Umpire Score Pad and Telephone and of course deliver the Umpire Microphone signal which is in turn distributed to the PA system locally and the BBC for worldwide broadcast.

R G Jones’ Tim Speight comments: “We have used VDC as a supplier at Wimbledon for the  last 12 years. They are able to supply all of the stock we require and the cables are accepted as industry standard; as such we have never had issues when dealing with prickly broadcast engineers. What can I say? ‘They do cables that work’…”