EKR 107.2 RSL

5TH DECEMBER 1995

ENGINEERING ON THE EKR RSL

The aims of East Kent Radio when it came to engineering was to provide a high quality functional operational set up. It was decided to source all material digitally. The studios were built in a converted stable block under the guidance of acoustic information supplied by David Hawkins of East Lake Audio Limited. The cost of building the studio was not expected to be retrieved from profits made by advertising on the RSL. The studios were to be used for future audio recording production and for this reason we were able to offset the costs and build them to a very high acoustic standard.

Our transmission site was conveniently positioned adjacent to our studios. Two ISDN lines and four telephone landlines were installed by British Telecommunications Plc. We used two ISDN systems, one for Metro travel using an APTX-100 Codec and terminal adaptor. The second was to relay KFM overnight using the RE 663 Musicam decoder system, providing full bandwidth stereo in one direction from Tonbridge

The two studios technical inventories were as follows:
2 Sonifex DX 300 triple stack discart machines used for commercial and promo play out
3 DN 990 R Denon Minidisc recorder/players
2 DN 961 FA Denon compact disc players
1 Neumann U87 presenter mic
3 Audio Technica ATM 63 microphones
1 MBI series 10 Self-Op 12 Channel mixer with PPM's
1 Audix digital telephone balancing unit
1 Audio Developments AD 148 Production Studio mixing desk
1 Panasonic DA10 DAT player/recorder
3 Studer/Revox B77 1/4" machines
1 Technics SL1210 turntable for transfer of archive material to minidisc
1 Portable DAT and 1 portable minidisc player with Beyer reporter mics
1 Calrec stereo compressor limiter for studio microphones

The output of the studio was routed into a switcher which also had the RE Codec from KFM on another input. The output of this router was sent to an optimod FM processor 8101B. This allowed us overnights to free the on-air studio (direct to KFM) for further commercial and promo production. The opitimod output was fed to our transmitter equipment which had been DTI approved and comprised of one SBS FM stereo exciter, one RE Electronics RDS encoder (with "EASTKENT" text display). The transmitter output was fed to a J Beam FM Aerial on a versatower mast system.

During our transmission the Radio Communications Agency were requested to visit us after a complaint received from the Dover area of a very strong signal. On investigation the DTI were extremely happy with our technical output.