What whistles do the WC referees use? So far I've seen Nishimura with the Valkeen and Cakir with Fox 40 classic at least..
I've seen most with Valkeen, you are right though I saw a fox as well. Whoever reffed the russia v s korea game had a whistle that had a different sound.
I think it's over 80% Valkeen. The only referees I know of are Geiger and I think Mazic with a Fox 40.
Holy moley, over $50 for a whistle? At that price it had better provide instant replay for you. I'll take my $5 Fox thanks.
Having acquired aValkeen, using it for a season prior to my dog chewing it do death, definitely not worth the money. Any $5-$10 whistle performs the same. But it looks pretty.
Disagree, in loud stadiums it works wonders. Also performs very well as a tool for man management in "heated matches." 9/10 players think my whistle is to loud for the medium size tweet I do for kick offs if I am in a 10 foot radius of them. Had a 16 year old boy tell me, that he wanted to punch the player that fouled him, but didn't want to hear me whistle again.
The Sonik will get you 98% of that for a fraction of the price. The Valkeen is ref jewelry. I'm surprised I don't have one.
I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this or it has been mentioned before but the Dolphin has almost the identical design. The sound is very similar as is the volume. Don't get me wrong, I had one before I retired and, yes, it's jewelry. Sure, you can tell time with just a plain old Timex but what's the fun in that? If you can afford it, no biggie. But there are plenty of other things to spend money on.
In the few stadia I've worked with any sized crowd, the Sonic Blast works. Other whistles (and my Valkeen) get lost. YMMV. Speaking of referee jewelry, why are we not talking about the new 2014 WC Referee Watch? (read: is there one, and if not, why?)
There was a small "discussion" about the ref shoes being worn. lots of yellow/green on them, including the laces. But I like them, maybe with black laces though.
So many valkeens- I'm sure these refs prob got them for free, but one wonders if there a sponsorship deal going with molten. Either that or the top guys have spoken. With their whistles.
Every referee at the last world cup got a Valkeen with their names on it. I imagine quite a few are still using the one from last time, even if not, $50 really isn't that much for a piece of equipment, compared to some of their other tools, ie "headsets".
At international level and even national level, you rarely pay for any of your equipment as an official.
I don't know if it's the mic's at the stadia or the Valkeen whistle, but I am not impressed with it's sound. It sounded muted and at a lower tone than the Fox 40.
The watch is the special one hooked up to the goal line tech. Chronos smartwatch, made by TI (my dad works there and sent me some articles), but the GoalControl people just bought them off the shelf essentially and developed the software for them. Could have done it with any smartwatch with a good dev kit. Article below, don't know where from, I got it emailed to me and some Googling doesn't turn up a source Article on watch (Move your mouse to reveal the content) Article on watch (open) Article on watch (close) World Cup 2014 keeps score with Chronos platform ·9 Jun 2014 3:18 PM By Andy Friedlander, Contributing Writer Goal-line technology will be used to verify goals for the first time at the 2014 World Cup, which begins Thursday, June 12. Each game’s referee will wear a TI Chronos watch modified to alert the ref when the ball crosses the goal line. VIDEO: • Watch avideo demonstration of the technology RELATED ARTICLES: • EE Times: Ref's watch vibrates when a goal is scored • Goal-line technology set up ahead of FIFA World Cup As the planet's best soccer players battle for their sport's ultimate prize – the FIFA World Cup – millions of fans around the world will be watching breathlessly, urging their nation's teams to put the ball in the goal. And when they do, it will be TI that lets the world know. OK, really TI will only let one person know, but that person is the most important one of all – the referee. Throughout the 2014 tournament in Brazil, which begins Thursday, June 12, each game's referee will wear a TI Chronos watch modified to not only keep the official match time but also to alert the ref when the ball crosses the goal line. A World Cup first The goal-detecting technology is a first for the World Cup, a decision made by soccer's international governing body, FIFA, after a controversial call during the previous tournament in 2010. Just before halftime of an elimination-round match against Germany, England's Frank Lampard bounced a shot off the crossbar and behind the German goalkeeper that the referee called no goal, though TV replays showed the ball clearly crossed the line. Instead of rallying behind the tying score, England slumped to a lopsided 4-1 defeat. In an odd coincidence, the job of preventing a similar occurrence was awarded to a German company, GoalControl, over England's Hawk-Eye Innovations, creator of the line-calling technology for the professional tennis tour. The GoalControl-4D system uses seven high-speed cameras aimed at each goal from all angles, providing a three-dimensional image of where the ball is, accurate to within millimeters. When the ball completely crosses the goal line, the system signals the referee, activating a vibration and a visual display on the ref's watch in a fraction of a second. And that's where TI comes in. It's not exactly a direct path, however. It begins with the MSP430 microcontroller and TI's efforts to make it a go-to platform for applications developers. At first, the kits were simple. "It was basically a board where you just put an MSP430 on it and you have access to the pins and not much more," said Markus Pfeiffer, MSP430 IDE team supervisor based at TI's facility in Freising, Germany, near Munich. "Later we introduced interesting EVMs with much greater capabilities, but they were all board-type products. "Then we thought, ‘Hey, why aren't we doing something more cool than that?' That's how the idea started for the eZ430-Chronos development kit." The watch offered a cooler toy for developers to try their ideas on, with various sensors, buttons, an LCD display and a wireless interface in an attractive, ready-made package for whatever products they could come up with. "I could give you a standard evaluation board with a CC430 on it," Markus said. "Would you use it if you weren't specifically looking for that device? Maybe, maybe not. But if I give you a Chronos, you have something you can play with right away. That makes it very attractive to develop code on this platform. It's just more fun." Among the developers to tinker with the Chronos platform was Germany's Fraunhofer Institute, which eventually used the watch in its own goal detection system. The Fraunhofer system, called GoalRef, uses chips implanted in the ball to determine whether it breaks a magnetic field set up in the goal. Ease of use of an innovative toolGoalRef was tested in a lower-level FIFA event in 2012 and was among the finalists for the World Cup assignment. When GoalControl won the bid in March 2013, it quickly made a deal with GoalRef to provide the referee's watches, saying in a press release that "our intention was to offer a device that international referees have already tested and know from experience the ease of operation and reliability." The Chronos watches to be used in the World Cup are controlled by a variation of the MSP430 known as the CC430, which, Markus said, is "an MSP430 with a radio." It adds wireless communication to a package that already includes the simplicity and ultra-low power capability of the MSP430. While TI's technology is a major part of the GoalControl/GoalRef system, the company was not involved in its development – the developers simply purchased a product off the shelf and used it as the platform. In fact, Markus said he didn't know the Chronos would be taking the world stage until some colleagues told him they had seen the watch in a TV news report. Adrian Valenzuela, a former member of TI's Chronos team, said the development of the World Cup goal line technology demonstrates exactly why the Chronos was created. "I love this application because it's a true testament to the ease of use of an innovative tool like the Chronos," he said. "GoalControl was able to take a TI product released five years ago and, with no TI support, create a working goal-tracking system reliable enough to use in the world's most popular sporting event." As for Markus, he was hesitant to say he'd be watching the World Cup more closely because of all this. After all, his home country's team enters the tournament ranked second in the world and is considered one of the favorites to win the title. "Well, I'm German, so the World Cup is pretty big for us anyway," he said with a laugh. "But I'll definitely be looking at the wrists of the referees to see if I can see the Chronos, that's for sure."
Nestor Pitana has two whistles attached to a wrist lanyard. A FOX40 classic as the primary and a big pea whistle.
Compared with other pieces of a ref-equipment, $50 is not too much at all, especially as it's the most important ref's tool. However we all have our own preferences. I like the sound of the Valkeen too, but in use, I prefer small-sized whistles, and the Valkeen is quite big. Surprisingly, I have never seen a Sonic Blast in official use! The one and only example of using a Sharx I've seen, was an amateur game we played, blown by a Hungarian ex-FIFA ref. That sounded great, but I dislike its size, and shape in hand. In the final, Nicola Rizzoli blew a simple FOX40 classic, attached to a shoelace, in the game for the bronze medal, Djamel Haimudi also had a classic with finger-grip. No doubt, the FOX classic does the job as well, even on the highest level of officiating.