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Brentwood Radios enjoyed another day out at Buckingham Palace as we were once again invited along to supply two way radios for the Duke of Edinburgh Gold Award presentation event.
More than 6000 people attended the ceremony in the Palace gardens, with 3000 young people receiving the highest award from the flagship enterprise and life skills scheme. His Royal Highness The Duke of Edinburgh, patron of the scheme, was on hand to welcome the successful participants and hand out the awards.
He was helped out by a star-studded cast of guest presenters, including comedian Bill Bailey, impressionist Jon Culshaw, Olympic medallist Louis Smith, McFly’s Tom Fletcher and Blur’s Alex James.
Brentwood has been supplying two way radios for the award ceremony for a number of years. In the past, we have usually hired out Motorola analogue handsets ‘back-to-back’, meaning without any ancillary equipment to help with signal range. While that has largely worked well, last year there were some issues with coverage at the extremities of the extensive Palace gardens which we were determined to put right this time around.
Keeping up appearances
The standard solution in these situations is to supply a repeater unit combined with an antenna, which boosts signal efficiency and increases geographic range.
The challenge we had in this case was that the Palace is very particular about appearances – any equipment we used had to be hidden from sight, and we were not allowed to mount anything on buildings or trees.
Our answer was to mount the antenna on a tripod, and then hide that and the repeater in an equipment tent. To get the best range possible, we had to locate the geographic centre of the Palace grounds and position our hardware there.
With this in place, staff working the event were supplied with Motorola CP040 analogue handsets. A precursor of the Motorola DP1400, the CP040 remains a popular hire radio for its simplicity, reliability and value for money. To accompany the radios, we also supplied D shape and two wire earpieces to ensure that event staff could hear conversations at all times throughout the busy event. These were accompanied by soft leather carry cases with a shoulder strap to make carrying the handsets around all day more comfortable, and also to free up their hands for other things.
Overall, the customer was delighted with the solution we provided, the day went off without a hitch, the two way radios worked perfectly and everyone enjoyed a lovely day out at the Palace!
If you have an event you require a communication solution for please don’t hesitate to get in touch – call and speak to our team today on 01245 403520.