Tour of Britain 7-14th September

Communication Specialists supports the Tour of Britain once again, now our 4th year running for this fantastic event.

We are now getting ready for another Tour of Britain which starts on the 7th Sepetmber and ends on the 14th September.

Once again Comm Spec are supporting The Tour of Britain and providing all the communication equipment and the technology to help the races communicate during this eventful Tour of Britain.

After a fantastic race in 2007 where British riders took three stage wins and three out of the four leaders jerseys on offer, the 2008 Tour of Britain grows another day longer this year, meaning more opportunities than ever to see the best of British and international pro-cycling on the roads of the UK. The 2008 Tour of Britain will visit a total of 15 host venues around the country, nine of which are completely new to the race, so if the race hasnt been past your door step, perhaps this is the year!

For the Tour of Britain this year spectators can watch the race on ITV4 and track the actual race in real time via the service provided by the Tour of Britain partners, Ordnance Survey.

The 2008 race is looking to be the best ever with Olympic medalists taking part and a host of other international teams and star riders.

Tour of Britain race manual - download here

All equipment will be prepared in our workshop (programming, testing, charging batteries) one week before installation. Installation of car/mobile units including motorcycles equipment is tested a week before.

Instructions on how to operate channels was given to all users.

So far all equipment and system works well. Comm-spec Team (Kervin Labrosse, Raymond Brooks and Slawosz Uznanski) is following the race in Tour Of Britain as a technical support for two way radio equipment and all communication system.

Tour of Britain route, are we in your area?
Stage 1: London Circuit | Sunday 7 September Stage 2: Milton Keynes - Newbury | Monday 8 September Stage 3: Chard - Burnham-On-Sea | Tuesday 9 September Stage 4: Worcester - Stoke On Trent | Wednesday 10 September Stage 5: Kingston Upon Hull - Dalby Forest 1 Thursday 11 September Stage 6: Darlington - Newcastle Gateshead | Friday 12 September
Stage 7: Glasgow - Dumfries & Galloway | Saturday 13 September
Stage 8: Blackpool - Liverpool | Saturday 14 September

What is HF SSB?

Do you require Long Range Communications?

HF SSB is the answer

HF means High Frequency whereas SSB means Single Sideband

HF & SSB radios are capable of providing communication over hundreds to thousands of Kilometres.

Buy our high frequency Codan Products at Comm Spec

HF provides communication beyond the range that is possible with conventional VHF/UHF systems, which rely on the line-of sight between communicating parties. HF on the other hand, achieves long distance communication by bouncing its signal off the ionosphere (sky waves) as shown in the Diagram below. Until recently there had always been a dead space of roughly 70 -220 Km between the point where the ground wave terminated and the point where the first sky wave returned to earth.

Standard Base Station Antenna Propagation

This operational shortcoming is unacceptable and a solution has been found by using the NVIS System. Under this system, the antenna radiates a signal near vertically up to bounce down off the ionosphere, thus providing an uninterrupted footprint from ground "0" to a radius of 6,000 Km or more.

NVIS Base Station Antenna Propagation

This operational shortcoming is unacceptable and a solution has been found by using the NVIS System. Under this system, the antenna radiates a signal near vertically up to bounce down off the ionosphere, thus providing an uninterrupted footprint from ground "0" to a radius of 6,000 Km or more.

Two Way Radios and Cars

Mobile radios fitted in cars require little maintenance if the radio and antenna are permanently installed. However our engineers find that in lots of cases when the radio is fitted in hire cars the radio/antenna has to be easily removable. This results in the use of magnetic mounted antenna and the radio fitted under one of the front seats. Because the wiring is not fixed it is likely to get damage and become unreliable.

The two main areas that cause the most problems are that aerial cable and the microphone cable. Damage to the aerial cable will reduce the coverage area, put excessive strain on the electronics of the radio and area of radio coverage becomes unreliable. If the cable is not repaired or replaced expensive repairs to the mobile may be also required. Unfortunately as the aerial cable is coaxial it is not simply a case of a visual inspection but needs to tested with calibrated test equipment.

Damage to the microphone cable is also hard to detect as the cable is made up of very thin flexible wire, if it is damaged it will result is intermittent communication until it fails completely.

Some customers have obtained magnetic antennas that have a small magnetic base and very thin aerial cable (coax) believing that this will solve problems with the area of coverage - wrong! an antenna that is used for two way communication needs to be adjusted to operate on the required frequency efficiently.

The magnetic base is too small to keep the antenna on the roof of cars when passing under such things height restriction bars in car parks. Two-way radios and base stations should be checked at lest once a year to ensure that the equipment is operating within manufactures specifications and licensing requirements.

The Phonetic Alphabet

The Phonetic Alphabet is used by radio operators, to spell out words. It is useful when exchanging important and precize information (addresses, names, etc) especially during not clear transmission. This alphabet has been changed over the years and in different groups of radio users and different countries the alphabet varying from each other.

The NATO phonetic alphabet, more formally the international radiotelephony spelling alphabet, is the most widely used spelling alphabet. Though often called "phonetic alphabets", spelling alphabets have no connection to phonetic transcription systems like the International Phonetic Alphabet.

Instead, the NATO alphabet assigns code words to the letters of the English alphabet acrophonically so that critical combinations of letters (and numbers) can be pronounced and understood by those who transmit and receive voice messages by radio or telephone regardless of their native language, especially when the safety of navigation or persons is essential. The paramount reason is to ensure intelligibility of voice signals over radio links.

We have a list of the phonetic alphabet on our website that lists the words from NATO & International Aviation, British Forces, NY Police, French, German, Italian and Spanish!

Tour of Britain

Communication Specialists provide two way radio for the Tour of Britain

The Tour of Britain is a blue riband cycling event that returned to the British cycling calendar in 2004 after an absence of five years. Cycling is a hugely popular sport and British cyclists are among the best in the world, winning five gold medals in the 2004 Olympics and Paralympics.

The Tour of Britain has formerly been known as the Milk Race, the Kellogg's Tour and the Pru Tour of Britain. The aspiration of the Tour of Britain was to re-launch the event along the lines of the Tour de France, which has no title sponsor but a spectrum of public and private sector support.

The Tour of Britain has placed itself on a global platform alongside major races such as The Tour de France and Giro d'Italia by attracting a combination of national and international teams. Teams which are attracted to racing the Tour of Britain include Pro Tour Teams such as T-Mobile, Quickstep, Phonak and CSC.

The world governing body the UCI (the Union Cyclisme Internationale) granted the 2004Tour of Britain world championship ranking status. The Tour of Britain is determined in the future to become part of the UCI's elite Pro Tour calendar.

The Tour of Britain has four founding directors: Chief Executive, Hugh Roberts who also heads sporting marketing and events company Sweetspot Tony Doyle MBE, twice world pursuit champion Mick Bennett, double Olympic medallist Peter Moore OBE, former Managing Director of Center Parc.

The Tour of Britain is a not for profit organisation governed by a Board of Trustees with representatives from the sport of cycling, trade and industry and politics.

Communication Specialists are sponsors of the Tour of Britain and installed their radio equipment, their engineers Slawosz Uznanski, Raymoond Brooks and Maciej Korneluk were there that day to help install the required equipment on Thursday 6 September 2007.

For the Tour of Britain Communication Specialists supplied the following equipment:

• 60 + 6 car/mobile Motorola GM900 and CM140 radio units complete with fist mics, power leads and UHF 3dB collinear mag mounting antennas, installed in over 20 brand new 2007
• Vauxhall Astra and Vectra cars
• 4 mobile units GM950 for motorcycles with autocom headset systems
• 80 + 30 hand portable Motorola radios with spare batteries and chargers

All systems work with 2 independent repeaters, located in the organisers cars, one in front of the cyclists group other one in the middle, to provide maximum coverage for all radio users.

All equipment was prepared in our workshop (programming, testing, charging batteries) one week before installation. Installation of car/mobile units was made on Thursday 6 September and Friday 7 September (motorcycles on Saturday). Giving out all hand portable radio equipment to the users was made on Saturday and Sunday.

Instructions on how to operate channels was given to all users.

So far all equipment and system works well. Comm-spec Team (Kervin Labrosse, Raymond Brooks and Slawosz Uznanski) is following the race in Tour Of Britain as a technical support for two way radio equipment and all communication system.

Stage 1: Reading to Southampton - Monday 10 September
Stage 2: Yeovilton to Taunton - Tuesday 11 September
Stage 3: Worcester to Wolverhampton - Wednesday 12 September
Stage 4: Rother Valley Country Park to Bradford - Thursday 13 September
Stage 5: Liverpool to Kendall - Friday 14 September
Stage 6: Dumfries to Glasgow - Saturday 15 September