[cma-l] Preparation

[Ian Hickling]

With all the new Applications having gone in this week - and Post RTPG letters notifying clearance appearing regularly, can we offer some sincere advice based on having to deal regularly with problems which should not occur:Don't assume that the studio packages on offer are going to be right for your own requirements. Our 15 years' experience tells us that there is no such thing as a "standard" studio. Get at least three quotes. Bone fide suppliers will provide these promptly and free of charge if they want your business.Don't assume that you can install studio equipment yourself - or that a tame engineer with other skills will be able to do it. It's a highly complex job and one wrong solder joint in the many thousands required can produce huge problems and take ages to find and fix.Get advice on how best to cover your target audience. Detailed coverage predictions are easy to obtain but must be prepared by someone with expert knowledge of the terrain, of antenna design and of Ofcom's many and complex requirements. Most suppliers and consultants will make a charge for this.Don't assume that sticking an aerial on your roof - or the location you used for RSLs - will provide good signal coverage. It's vital to the success of your project that you get this right before you commit to a design.Make sure you know how much power you will need and tell Ofcom at the outset. Ofcom will listen to a well-constructed argument and will generally meet your requirements.Don't assume that you can change your transmission system once you're on air if it isn't performing as you would like. Doing it later will definitely be a long painful process.Ofcom will almost certainly award mixed polarity. Currently only 17% of the 225 CR transmitters currently on air are using balanced mixed polarity propagation. The rest are wasting some or all of the extra power they could be using.Do all these things before you submit your final transmission format to Ofcom. If you're not providing a coverage service good enough for your listeners then your business will suffer.
Ofcom is not in a position to tell you whether what you have proposed in your Application will work in practice - only that it complies with some very general guidelinesOK - we provide all of the above services so to an extent I'm pushing our business.
We do an awful lot of that without charge - because that way we believe  Clients will come back to us when they are ready to invest.
But there are a lot of other good suppliers/installers out there too - so you do have quite a wide choice.I just hate to see honest conscientious people spending their hard-earned money on systems and equipment that are simply not right for this very specialised job - for the sake of asking a few questions to people who have current first-hand experience.Ian 		 	   		  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.commedia.org.uk/pipermail/cma-l/attachments/20141218/3d72fece/attachment.html>