Imagine playing over a dozen different CDs an hour on your CD player at home, all weekend long, and most weekday evenings
- It wouldn’t be long before the player broke down. Our presenters expect to be able to do just that in our studio
all the time, and every time the music must play. If it doesn’t, they experience the radio presenter’s worst
nightmare – silence! That’s the challenge for the engineering team here at Chippenham Hospital Radio –
to keep the music playing, every day of the year.
It’s the not-so-glamorous end of hospital radio. It's not unusual to come across an engineer, upside down, soldering
iron in one hand, screwdriver in the other, or on his back under a mixing desk.
Chippenham Hospital Radio has undergone a massive transformation in recent years - we now have one of the most advanced
and up to date studios in hospital radio. So what do we need to bring you a first class radio service?
We still play a lot of our music from CD and Minidisc. We don’t use “consumer” players like you
might have at home, because they’re not designed to cope with the level of usage the studio demands. We use professional
CD and Minidisc players (a pair of Denon Pro-CD players, and a pair of Denon Pro-MD players). We also still use Cassette (3
x Marantz Pro decks. A lot of really good legacy material is still in this format, and we also make our studio facilities
available to the local Talking Newspaper team. All these players are remotely started from the mixing desk. We also have two
computer-based playout systems - one used for "live" programmes (with over 8000 tracks from all genres for presenters to choose
from) and the other for our 24-hour sustaining service.
The mixing desk is probably the most important part of the studio - we use an Alice Soundtech Series A desk with 18 channels,
this was bought using money kindly donated by the League of Friends. We have two professional microphones and a telephone
balancing unit which allows us to take ‘phone calls on-air and for our sports reporter to phone in from the football
ground at Hardenhuish Park in Chippenham. There’s very little difference between our studio and those of the “big
boys” out there in the world of commercial radio – the only difference is that our equipment has to be bought
by income generated by our fund-raising activities.
The studio is fully soundproofed and broadcasts on a closed-loop system within the hospital, and on the Internet. Studio
enhancements planned for the future include the expansion of the service to cover Savernake hospital in Marlborough and the
extension of the closed-loop system to include the Restaurant and MIU waiting area. We are also hoping to build a production
studio to allow presenters to be able to record and prepare features and promotions in advance of their show, as well as using
the facility for training new presenters prior to unleashing them on an unsuspecting public.
The engineering team also look after our outside broadcast equipment. This is used heavily in the summer months,
providing PAs and music to numerous fetes and fundraising events. So as you can imagine we have to keep the equipment
in a fully workable state. With that in mind, plans are afoot to replace the more elderly items of PA equipment, when funds
permit.
There is so much taking place behind the scenes to bring you a first class radio service, and the engineering team are
constantly upgrading and changing with the times. If you think you have what it takes to join the team and you are interested
in the nuts and bolts of radio, get in touch with us – we are always looking for enthusiastic volunteers to help out!
The more technically-minded may be interested in some of the more complicated aspects of our studio configuration.
With you in mind, the Station Engineer is in the process of compiling a few lists and charts <yawn>
