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Behind The Scenes At Rural Radio By
Emma Edwards The Cable & Wireless telephone system can be divided into two areas, Stanley, which is accessed through a copper network and everywhere else, which operates over a radio network. The latter system is kept up and running by the Rural Radio team of engineers and technicians. Their work is not the easiest. On sunny warm days there are benefits, but try to imagine yourself up a fifty foot mast in a southerly gale carefully aligning an antenna. Once your hands are numb you then have to perform the intricate operation of bolting equipment into a box about one foot high by six inches deep, sorting out a multitude of different coloured wires encased in a sticky, greasy coating and making sure they are all connected properly. Fingers go from pink to blue, but the work has to be done, deadlines have to be met and the telephone network maintained. This was the experience I had when I headed off to the West to find out just what it was that our engineers had to do to install a new telephone station. Pulling cable up the side of the hill got you nice and warm, but much of the work required you to carefully clip wires into place, ensure alarms worked and the power supply to the station was connected. It gets so cold every movement of your limbs becomes painful and it takes a couple of hours to get the feeling back in your fingers and stop your nose from dripping. Thankfully the mast was not too far off the road, allowing easy access. However, many of the masts used for the rural network are in very remote places. Journey times are long and a simple job can take all day or several days. No roads or track improvements are planned to reach these areas. The camp network requires a lot of maintenance. Each remote site has its own solar power generating system which is also backed by wind chargers during the winter months. Large batteries store power and these need to be maintained to ensure reliable operation. The wind generators have been known to be blown apart after only a few hours in service, however times have moved on and the equipment has improved (wind chargers have been know to survive up to 18 months), ensuring that the camp network now runs more efficiently. Routine maintenance does require some outages to occur, but these are kept to a minimum and the unexpected outages that used to happen regularly now go almost unnoticed. The improved telephone system situation now enjoyed by Campers is due to rural radio engineers, their dedication and expertise in all winds and weathers. Emma Edwards is a geology graduate, currently studying to become an infant and junior school teacher. Our thanks to Emma for allowing us to republish this article which originally appeared in Penguin News.
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