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“There is still some very small interruption in the pictures sometimes but we’re getting very close to 100 percent,” said Thomas Riedel, the indefatigable 40-year-old managing director of the company, who sounds like he will not be completely content until the on-board pictures are flawless 100 percent of the time and not just 99.9 percent. Riedel and the Wuppertal-based company he founded as a teenager to provide voice radio communications for events also supplies the radio communications for Formula One teams – but, unfortunately for TV viewers, Riedel does not handle the wireless video signals from the cars. He savours the creative atmosphere at the Red Bull Air Race.

Red Bull Air Race drives technology and people to the limits

“The Red Bull Air Race definitely drives the technology and people to the limits,” said Riedel, who began by providing the radio communications systems for one of the first races in Budapest in 2003 and was then asked by Red Bull Air Race CEO Bernd Loidl if he could develop a better system for the on-board cameras. “At the time we only supplied the radio equipment. We weren't planning to get into wireless video. We only started because Bernd asked us to. We really learned a lot from the needs of the race and yet on the other hand we helped support its development. We feel we’re indeed a partner in the development of the whole format."

Riedel Communications Riedel’s expertise in delivering the crystal clear images from the on-board cameras is unrivalled and helped the Red Bull Air Race win an Emmy Award for sports television broadcasting in the United States. Riedel's worldwide leadership is hardly surprising considering he has an enormous team of 40 engineers (or fully 16 percent of his staff) devoted solely to research and development.

“It’s one special area where we’ve acquired a lot of knowledge. Usually you have a race car and it’s just on the ground. But here we had something that is three-dimensional - in the air and making high-speed turns in all directions. On top of that, it’s not only the pilots who are pulling up to 12g, it’s also the equipment. So it was all pretty challenging. We did a lot of thinking about antennas and signals, and we did lots of testing, endless testing. We found solutions and developed special devices.

What made it work is a combination of a lot of things: finding the right kind of positions for the antennas, using the right electronics and the right components that can handle the high G forces, and it’s the experience. It took almost two years to make it work on the level we’re at today.”

15-member team at each Red Bull Air Race

Riedel, whose 250-person company also provides the radio & wired communications technology for the Olympics and the World Cup as well as the European soccer championships and the Asian and Commonwealth Games, has a 15-member team at every Red Bull Air Race to set up and operate all the radio and wireless comms technology for the entire crew and the race’s media centres. Everything from the race director’s “Smoke On!” instructions to the pilots hurtling into the track to the video signals sent to the giant video screens in the spectator viewing areas to the wireless internet connections in the media centres all pass through systems set up and operated by Riedel.

“We’re constantly being challenged to find new solutions to optimise things at the race,” said Riedel, who grew up wanting to be a magician before realising at some point there were limits to both his talent and the demand for fire eaters. “Part of it is the logistics but it is also finding out the limits, also with radio technology. Radio frequencies are very limited and therefore you need to see how you can deal with all these signals. We have all these planes and so many wireless cameras, so many radios, and we needed to find new solutions to grow with the event because the resources (such as radio frequencies) are not there. You can multiply signals by going from analogue to digital in some areas. There are a variety of things you can do. You have to come up with smart solutions and that’s what we’re always working on.”

Thomas Riedel - an unassuming with boundless energy

Riedel, an unassuming man with boundless energy, flashes a proud smile when asked about his company’s humble beginnings – it is now the world number one in the small but rapidly growing area of event communications. After giving up on a magician’s career on stage, Riedel shifted to the backstage by supplying lighting and sound. He set up his own company at the age of 18. “I was always interested in show business and entertainment. I started as a magician when I was 10. But at some point I realised I’m not going to be good enough on stage so I decided on a backstage career. I was interested in lighting and sound equipment and that was the start. After that I entered into radio technology for events. It was all very small back then but it grew very fast.”

That start with lighting and sound grew into providing event radio communications, and before long he ended up doing just that for the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer. Shortly after returning home, Riedel was interviewed on a local Wuppertal radio station about his Olympic experience just as a Formula One engineer happened to be passing through town on the motorway and heard him talking about the Olympics.

“He thought ‘who the hell is Thomas Riedel?’ and that’s how I ended up in Formula One,” said Riedel, smiling at the irony of landing a job like that through the radio interview heard by chance. F1 was a comparatively small event at the time but it was still a big step for Riedel. “At first we were only supporting the German Grand Prix but at some point the teams got interested in us and now we do about 80 percent of the users in F1. We handle all the communications between the cars and pit, the TV guys, the race control communications and all the recording of the team radio things. We’re the quiet guys in the background.”

So why doesn’t Riedel supply the wireless video links in F1 as well so that their pictures are as sharp and turbulence-free as in the Red Bull Air Race? “You should talk to Bernie about that,” Riedel said with a laugh, referring to the F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone. “Let’s see what happens.”