BHBS Technical Information

BHBS broadcasts from a small studio complex on the top floor of the Bristol Royal Infirmary (BRI) Old Building in central Bristol.

We do not broadcast in the usual sense, which means you can't can't hear BHBS on the radio. Our signal is piped to Bristol's hospitals using a system of telephone lines directly to the wards.

Request A Song - click on the mic

For a virtual tour of one of our studios, online visitors are welcome to visit this page on our original website. Online studio tour

The Blue Studio

Both of our studios are colour coded to avoid confusion with our old studio. Both studios are equipped with identical equipment. The mixing desks are Alice Air 2000 with twelve channels. The left six channels are mono and handle the Telco unit two off air tuners/OB lines, Two control room mics and two main studio mics. The right hand stereo channels cover, two turntables (Technics SL1200) two Denon CD players, two DAT machines also modified for autostart and two channels for computer playback. The record/playback is handled by the computer. The mics used throughout the studio are AKG C451.

The red control room is the larger of the two. The presenter in the red control room sits to the side of the desk, whilst in the blue control room they sit facing the technical operator. Both control rooms can talk to each other as well as the main studio. There is also a facility for both control rooms to talk to an OB and also to the telephone.

The smallest room and the most important. All our incoming and outgoing lines are routed through here. The equipment in the racks starts at the top with the line amplifiers. Ten identical amplifiers are used to send signals to five outgoing lines and to various studio sources. Below this there is a small jack field for checking the line amplifier ins and outs. The landlines to the hospitals are connected to our equipment through the U links on the next panel down and the "Off Air" tuner is beneath this. Below the tuner is the main studio switch. This is normally operated by remote control from the studio but it may also be overridden manually. The sports grounds cane put themselves on air using a remote "on air" switch so that we don't have to man the studio all day.

During the day and overnight our programmes are generated by a computer playback system. The computer which has almost a Terrabyte of disc storage is capable of running the whole radio station during unmanned hours.

News forms an important part of our programme output, keeping the patients in touch with the local scene. Every evening we produce our own local news bulletin. The programme is produced to give an in depth coverage of all the local news stories and presented in a manner that is slightly more laid back than many other local radio stations. The main studio which is used for news production can be switched between either of the control rooms.

Nearly all of our programmes are request-orientated. Each week we play upwards of 200 patients' requests. At 6 pm each evening we have 30 minutes before the first programme to sort out all of the records requested. Without a comprehensive record library we would be lost so we have over 10,000 single, 1,000 albums and 400 CDs in our library -  that's over 35,000 pieces of music!!!

To be able to find any track within 30 seconds is essential, so our record index is stored on  computers. The programme was written by one of our members and is capable of finding an item by track title, artist, composer, album title, or record number within 2 seconds.

Once we've found the music, we can play it on BHBS via our CD or record players, or on our computer playback system.

Ian Browne sorts the requests for his programme "Opening Time"