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2000 Year Twenty Four

2000 Summary of Events

Stories and snippets of information taken from the staff newsletter and from behind the scenes.

A look back at 2000 at Radio Heatherwood and all the events of the year.

The year 2000 was a busy year for the station engineer and manager as the impending move of the radio station would be upon us, this was generating a lot of work at home and also at the studio's.

In the early part of the year in his spare moments the station engineer was designing some studio layouts and working on the new web page presence for the league.

Work was also continuing on the conversion of cd's into MP3's for the 24 hour service. As the year progressed work in both the old and new studio's demanded serious amounts of time from the engineer.

When this years pages were first posted, it was as part of the new web presence which was being developed this year. The story of the move was added each week, so that staff could be kept informed of the progress of the new facilities.

The original posted pages were updated as part of this radio history compilation in 2008. Whilst the original pages were all about the move, we have now come to that part in the history of the radio to fill in on other events and deeds, which also took place in 2000.

PJ Davidson-Smith May 2011

January to March

In January a detailed set of photo's were taken of the studio to preserve the work and efforts gone into building the facility over the years.

17th January a letter is received from the hospital requesting us to attend a meeting with the estates department over the move of the radio. A copy of the letter is added to the staff notice board.

21st January a notice is added to the notice board asking staff how we should celebrate the last day in our old premises.

25th January two designs based on the current space allocated to the radio were sent to the manager from the station engineer.

Wednesday 9th February the league chairman and station manager Dave Smith and Studio Engineer PJ Davidson-Smith attended a meeting at the hospital at 5.30pm to discuss the studio move.
A copy of the dimensions of the new room are handed to the station engineer after the meeting. A quick visit to the room was organized afterwards.

Saturday 12th A visit to the proposed allocation room for the new studio is taken by the chairman and league secretary along with the studio manager and engineer. Photo's are taken of the room and measurements taken.

15th February and the final design of the new studio is agreed with the station manager.

On the 16th February 300 replacement headphones are ordered for the loan radio's.

20th February a detailed folder of the proposed move to the new room was submitted to the works department with 14 drawings and 8 pages of text.

2011 Comment

No contact/comment was received from the estates department and no discussions about any of the requirements in the folder were asked for by the estates.This would cause problems later on, as items and requirements were ignored/overlooked by them.

At the league meeting in March, treasurer Dave Smith proposed to the league that the league should fund the radio running costs each year set at £1500 and any additional funding for special projects would be undertaken by the presenters. This was approved and the Grand Draw was consigned to history.

In March the station received confirmation from the Victoria hall Trust they would sponsor this years broadcast licence.

April to June

A revue of staff members in early April revealed 8 members had email addresses

In April the first web presence was launched showing the radio service. The first design took the pages from the ward booklet.

©RadioHeritage
Web site staff notification.
Click to Enlarge:-

10th June and the second studio was closed and dismantled so that the wooden console could be installed in the new premises as studio 1.

25th June a detailed schedule on the shutdown of the radio was forwarded to the hospital rep.

On the 27th June a letter was sent to ward staff detailing the forthcoming closure of the radio services whilst the studio move took place.

As part of the development of low power AM and the 24 hour service investigations in the previous year and background work, preliminary costs are drawn up for the introduction of the computers for broadcasting.
A cost of £9600.

29th June and one of the distribution cables fuse is tripped, knocking out a large part of the am service.