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Portishead Radio played a considerable part in the BT Global Challenge Yacht Race on two fronts, by providing High Frequency voice communication with the fleet, to enable them to make telephone calls home to their various families, sponsorship companies and the world's press and providing a manual input for Standard C satellite messages.
Prior to sailing two crew members from each Yacht atended a one day course at Portishead Radio to receive instructions on how to operate the HF radio, an introduction into radio wave propagation and Standard C familiarisation training.
The HF voice communication facility was in much demand on all legs, especially the first leg from Southampton to Rio de Janeiro, the second Sunday at sea the Yachts made over 430 minutes worth of calls, equating to over seven hours of talk time ! Indeed on the first leg over 6,000 minutes of traffic was made or to put it another way 4 1/2 DAYS of continuous talking !
Leg 2 Rio to Wellington saw hundreds of calls from the Southern Ocean - with special schedules being arranged with the yachts to enable them to make calls over Christmas prior to arrival in Wellington, indeed many made calls direct to Portishead Radio just minutes prior to entering Wellington harbour, such was the clarity of communication.
By using highly directional transmitting and receiving aerials, Portishead maintained communication with the fleet, even on the most distant leg from Wellington to Sydney.
Virtually all of the HF communication since leaving Southampton has been handled by Portishead Radio including hundreds of Radio and TV calls - stations including BBC Radio 5, Radio 4, Sky TV, most regional stations in the UK, several Australian, New Zealand and South African stations, including Channel Africa. Classic FM and Manx Radio became daily customers. Lots of hard work was put in by the Radio Officers at Portishead to ensure the best possible radio circuits to the fleet.
In addition Portishead acted as the manual input point for messages to the fleet via Standard C satellite communications - several thousand messages were input during the race - peaking during the festive season at hundreds per day !
The radio waves are much quieter now the fleet has arrived home !
Peter Boast. |
 bt.com |
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