Processor tweaks

So, there are now 33 Heart stations across the UK, each broadcasting to a distinct area via a transmitter or two up on a hill.   Some of these stations are relatively new, whereas some (under other names) have been around for many, many years. Inevitably, they have different equipment installed both at the radio stations themselves and at the transmitters.

Which led to some head-scratching when one of the big bosses asked "Why don't all the Heart stations sound the same?" The majority of the station sound comes out of a box called a Processor that lives at the transmitter, and can be adjusted to meet different needs, depending on whether the radio station is predominantly speech-based, or music-based and, in the case of music-based stations, what sort of music they're playing.  

Because of the variety of equipment, some of these processors are anything up to 15 years old. Not surprisingly, technology has moved on in that time, and newer processors are capable of greater variety than older ones. So, to get all of them sounding the same is quite a challenge!   Given that a new processor costs some £11,000 these days, the other alternative - of replacing every processor across a fleet of some 50 or more transmitters - is not exactly cheap, and it's one that has been resisted so far!

To this end, I commissioned Ian Oakland, who has had a long history of selling and adjusting these processors, to visit a couple of our sites - Churchdown Hill, between Gloucester and Cheltenham, and Stroud (actually at a village called Randwick high above the Stroud valleys) to tweak the processors there to try to get them to match some other transmitters.   We picked one of the worst days of the year to do this, with snow making the ascents of the hills rather tricky, but we made it to both sites and back safely.

This is the mast and transmitter halls at Churchdown Hill.   Looking back down the lane, you can see how wintry it was on our visit:

And here's Ian hard at work tweaking that processor:

Mast Work

On the afternoon of 3 September 2009, under darkening skies, a group of Arqiva engineers replaced the passive reflector attached to the aerial mast that broadcasts Gold Gloucestershire. They were good enough to let me get in their way and take some photographs of their work.

First, the transmitter was disconnected from the mast, and the mast itself was connected directly to earth. Then, two riggers climbed the mast, trailing a rope.

The rope was attached to a pulley at the top of the mast, and let down to the ground, where it was attached to a well-greased steel cable connected to one end of the ladder-like reflector. The reflector was then heaved up to the top of the mast.

The steel cable attached to the loose end of this reflector - again, well-greased - was then attached to an anchor point in the ground, and the two copper cables taken to a termination cabinet. The two riggers could then return to the ground, after spending almost three hours clinging to the top of the mast.

Finally, the transmitter was tuned to the new match, and returned to service. A fascinating job!

An Interactive Studio to be taken out on the road to provide a taste of being a radio presenter

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