Author: Radio Company

What Is an Ultrasonic Transducer?

For a long time people have been telling me that family, love and happiness are the crucial things in life…At present I realise that I can take or leave all that as long as I have this headset in the world.

An ultrasonic transducer is an electrical component that converts ultrasonic sound waves beyond the range of human hearing into alternating current (AC) or direct current (DC) electrical signals that are then transmitted or recorded. Usually such devices are built upon crystals that demonstrate a piezoelectric effect, which conduct electrical current in response to mechanical stress or vibrations. The crystals have directly proportional output to the strength of the input sound wave or stress, and this makes them useful measuring devices as an ultrasonic transducer.

ultrasonic transducerApplications for ultrasonic transducer-based electronics included use in early television remote controls as signal devices, and, as of 2011, in anemometers used by weather stations to monitor wind course and speed. They are used in industrial applications to monitor the level of fluid in a tank, and in modern-day automobiles as of 2011 for echo location sensors to indicate objects in close proximity to the path of a vehicle that is backing up or pulling into a garage. Since an ultrasonic transducer can also play the role of an ultrasonic transmitterthrough input electrical power, they offer the capability of a primitive type of sonar in many cases. Sound waves can be reflected off of a surface and the distance to that surface measured by the time and frequency of the wave that bounces back.

Electrical devices that convert one form of energy to another, like ultrasonic sensors, often have widespread applications in electronics and industry. Many diverse uses for the ultrasonic transducer now exist, including in environmental controls for buildings, such as in humidifiers where they vaporize the surface of the water, and in burglar alarms to detect objects moving within an otherwise clear path. Ultrasonography also relies on the principle of an ultrasonic transducer in medicine, where sound waves of 1 to 30 megahertz are employed to remotely generate imagery for the state of muscles, internal organs, and blood vessels in the human body, as well as the state of a fetus during pregnancy.

Since the era of the 1940s, the ultrasonic transducer has been incorporated into testing equipment to detect flaws in a range of sonar-related applications. They can be used to find fine cracks, voids, or porous sections in concrete and building foundations, damaged or fractured metal welds, and flaws in other materials such as plastic, ceramic, and composites. The devices are versatile because the sound waves that they emit will be affected by any medium, whether liquid, solid, or gas. With a detector used to measure gas status, however, an intermediate gel is usually placed between the gas and the ultrasonic transducer, as sound waves are otherwise poorly conducted and recorded in a gas medium.

The field of flaw detection for ultrasonic technology is broken down into five different types of transducer designs: contact, angle beam, delay line, immersion, and dual element transducers. Contact transducers have to have close contact proximity to what they are measuring, such as a stud finder in the building trade used to detect wooden beams behind walls. An immersion transducer is waterproof and placed in a fluid flow. Both angle beam and delay line forms of an ultrasonic transducer are used to measure welds and in conditions of high temperatures. The dual element transducer is simultaneously a transmitter and receiver for continuous monitoring of rough or potentially flawed surfaces.

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A Martian Tribute

Professor Steve Squyres of New York’s Cornell University has named a beautiful piece of Martian landscape after his recently departed friend and colleague, the British scientist Colin Pillinger.

Squyres, who leads the team in charge of NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover, felt that naming a portion of the red planet in honour of his friend would be a fitting tribute. 

In a column for BBC News, Squyres wrote, “When I heard the news of Colin’s death, I knew immediately that we had to name a place on Mars after him. And by very good luck, Opportunity was at that moment approaching one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen on Mars. We named it Pillinger Point”.

Pillinger Point is situated on the Western rim of Endeavor Crater, a 22 km impact crater on the surface of Mars. The location offers perhaps the best view yet seen of the Martian landscape.

“I like to think that Colin would have enjoyed this view, and I hope that our image of it will help honour his memory”, wrote Squyres.

colin pilingerColin Pillinger, who died in May of this year of a brain haemorrhage, after nearly a decade of battling multiple sclerosis, was perhaps best known as the brains behind the unsuccessful Beagle 2 mission to Mars, which took place during 2003.

The unmanned probe was designed to seek out life in the Martian wilderness. Although the mission ultimately ended in failure, Squyres is optimistic regarding The Beagle’s final legacy. “What they (Pillinger and his team) did do, though, was energize the public in Britain and around the globe in a way that few scientific explorers have matched”. He writes.

Born in 1943, Colin Pillinger worked first for NASA, analyzing lunar samples and later at Cambridge University and then The Open University. In 2000, he had an asteroid named after him and in 2003; he was awarded a CBE by the Queen.

Later, in 2011, Pillinger was awarded the prestigious Michael Faraday Prize.

Writing of his friend and kindred intellect, Steve Squyres simply says, “Colin was a force of nature, and his enthusiasm for Mars exploration was unparalleled. So I think that Beagle 2’s greatest legacy, and part of Colin’s, is surely the thousands of young people who were inspired to pursue careers in science, in engineering, and in technology, and to follow in Colin’s footsteps”.

It is a fitting tribute for a man who spent his life and career looking toward the stars.

SOURCES

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-28033648

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Pillinger

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Inventors That Changed the World: Al Gross

Much like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character in the movie ‘Twins’, the walkie-talkie can claim to have many fathers. However, one of the most prominent names in the debate (and maybe the one with the single strongest claim to having invented the walkie-talkie) is Canadian/American inventor Al Gross.

The son of Romanian immigrants, Al Gross was born in Toronto, Canada in 1918, but his parents moved to Cleveland, Ohio, USA when he was quite young. Whilst on a steamboat trip across Lake Erie, the 9-year-old Gross encountered radio technology for the first time and, in so doing, ignited a passion within him that would change the world.

How passionate was he? By age 12, Gross had turned his parents’ basement into a radio centre. The bright young man would visit junkyards and salvage any material he thought he could use. Four years later –aged 16- Gross was awarded an amateur radio license, which was still in effect at the time of his death in 2000.

At the age of 18, Gross enrolled in the Case School of Applied Sciences. At the time, radio frequencies above 100MHz were relatively unexplored territory. Gross wanted to see exactly what could be done with them. He wanted to create a mobile, lightweight, handheld transceiver, using those uncharted frequencies. In 1938, he did just that, patenting the two-way radio, or ‘walkie-talkie’. He was just 20 years old.

War arrived on American shores in 1941 with the attack on Pearl Harbour. America scrambled to mobilize its armed forces and take advantage of any/all new technology that could aid the struggle against the Axis powers. The US Office of Strategic Services (OSS) – a forerunner to the CIA – tapped Gross to create an air-to-ground communications’ system. The system Gross designed employed Hertzian radio waves and was almost impossible for the enemy to monitor, even when allied planes were in enemy airspace. Gross’ system proved incredibly successful (so much so, that it was not declassified until 1976).

After the war, the inventor turned entrepreneur and founded the Citizens Radio Corporation, which took advantage of the first frequencies designated for personal use. His company was the first to receive FCC approval for use with the new ‘citizens’ band’. He licensed radios to other companies and supplied units to the Coast Guard, amongst others.

Then, in 1949 came another amazing discovery. Gross invented and patented the telephone pager. He invented the system with doctors in mind, but the medical community was (amazingly) slow to respond to this new technology. Only New York’s Jewish Hospital saw the potential of the pager as a life-saving device, when they implemented it in 1950.

Throughout the 1950’s, Gross, ever the pioneer, fought hard to garner interest for his newest idea – a mobile telephone. It took him eight years to get mobile telephony, as a concept, off the ground. Talk about being ahead of the curve!

Unfortunately, many of Gross’ best ideas were so far ahead of said curve, that his patents ran out before he could garner the profit his genius deserved. Had he earned the money eventually generated by CB radio, pagers and cellular phones, he would have died an extremely rich man. However, it was not to be.

Gross invented a lot throughout the years, but nothing brought him the amount of money that he potentially could have made from his earlier inventions. However, Gross was able to make a comfortable living, spending the 1960’s working for large corporations as a specialist in communications systems. 

In the 1990’s, he was employed as a Senior Staff Engineer for Orbital Sciences Corporation in Arizona, where he worked on satellite communications, military equipment and aerospace technology.

As an older man, Gross got the most joy from visiting local schools and giving presentations. He took extra pleasure in inspiring the next generation of scientists, engineers and thinkers.

In April of the year 2000, Al Gross (who had garnered numerous awards throughout his career, far too many to write about here) was honoured to receive the Lemelson-MIT Lifetime Achievement Award. He passed away eight months later in December 2000.

Gross never actually retired and was still working at the age of 82, a restless paragon of forward thinking, innovation and tireless imagination.

SOURCE

http://web.mit.edu/invent/iow/gross.html

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We Have A Look Under The Bonnet Of The IC-4088SR

With very little information on the internet about 2 way Radio’s, it is very rare when we get a chance to re post, with permission, an article from this industry.

PMR446 Handheld Transceiver

Designed to meet the demands of the licence free PMR 446 service, the IC-4088SR builds on its predecessor’s functionality, features and operating performance.

Featuring a high level of flexibility, the IC-4088SR allows instant communication between members of a group in and around buildings and over short distances. This makes it the perfect tool for keeping in touch with friends, family and work colleagues whilst in close proximity to them. The applications for the PMR446 service are almost limitless and the IC-4088SR would be suitable for camping, golf, catering, use in sports centres, on building sites, catering, events management, neighbourhood watch, factories, farms etc. What’s more it is water-resistant making it ideal for rambling, trekking, or for use on inland waterways etc.

An optional external charger socket or cigarette lighter lead allows you to charge and operate the IC-4088SR allowing you to use the IC-4088SR when and whenever you like. 

The IC-4088SR has all the hallmarks of a quality product. It is well designed, easy to use and very robust. Its strong body makes it ideal for outdoor activity enthusiasts, for example. In fact the IC-4088SR is ergonomically designed and there are an absolute minimum number of switches making operation quick and intuitive. The large, easy to read LCD shows operating information at a glance with clear status icons such as ‘low battery’ and ‘timer’ that are easily recognisable. 

In addition to its ease of use and aesthetic design the IC-4088SR is packed full of communication features that provides the user with a high level of usability and convenience. Among these useful functions are a simple voice scrambler that will provide secure private communication and a handy ‘Automatic Transponder’ function which automatically warns you if the other radios are out of range. 

Other useful operating functions include a call ring function, which allows you to send a ring tone when calling another party – similar to using a mobile phone. Ten different ring types can be selected from. To ensure clear communications with other radios, you can select from 8 different radio channels and 38 different group codes, giving more than 300 different combinations to choose from. A Smart Ring function is also included which lets you know whether your call has got all the way through.

The IC-4088SR transceiver is available with charger and four rechargeable batteries. Two commercial multi-packs are also available.

 

  • Rugged construction and high performance antenna
  • External DC power jack
  • Built-in voice scrambler
  • Simple to use for everyone
  • Economical three alkaline cells
  • Splash resistant construction
  • Built-in CTCSS encoder and decoder
  • Automatic transponder system
  • Smart-ring function
  • Call-ring function
  • Power save function
  • Low battery indicator
  • Automatic power-off timer (0.5–2 hours)
  • Scan function
  • PTT hold function
  • Variable time-out-timer (1–30 minutes)
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Going Once…Going Twice…The 700 Mhz Spectrum is Sold

It ended in a $19 billion whimper. The Federal Communication Commission posted this to its Web site Tuesday afternoon:

3/18/2008 05:14:26 PM Auction 73 Closed

There were no bids, withdrawals, or proactive activity rule waivers placed in Round 261. Therefore, Auction 73 has closed under the simultaneous stopping rule.

After 260 rounds of bidding over more than seven weeks the government auction has ended for the 700 Mhz wireless spectrum.

The winning bids totaled $19,592,420,000. That’s nearly double the amount the commission had hoped to raise from the spectrum being abandoned next year as television stations switch to new frequencies. On the scale of billions, the total has hardly changed in a month. But bidding continued on little blocks of frequencies around the country that cellphone companies are using to fill in gaps in their service. The last bid in the auction was $91,000 for frequencies around Vieques, P.R.

The government has yet to release the names of the winning bidders, but it may do so in the next few weeks. Analysts still guess that Verizon and AT&T most likely have bought the biggest chunks of spectrum to fill in their existing networks.

First, the commission needs to decide what to do with what it called the D block — a block of spectrum designated to be used both for commercial wireless service and for communication between public safety agencies. The single $472 million bid for that block is far below the $1.3 billion minimum price set by the commission. Analysts suggest that the government will likely proceed with the sale of the rest of the spectrum and go back to the drawing board for the D block.

Once the names are released, the auction rules give bidders a very short amount of time to deal among themselves, possibly trying to shore up financing. Then they will have to make a payment in full for their winnings. And of course they will need to spend many more billions of dollars between them to actually build out the networks that they signed up for.

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Managing to Manage Radio Communications Within Facilities Management

Facilities management is a complex and challenging role, often presenting a problem even to those who attempt to define it.

Essentially, the management requirements vary from facility to facility. The one constancy, to put it simply, involves handling the basic functions of the facility in question, allowing the other related businesses to go about their own day-to-day functions.

Facilities management is a £173bn a year industry, but it would be nothing without the use of two-way radios.

For a job that requires interaction with so many people and related parties, communication is key.

Think of a retail centre, an office block, a school or a hospital. Now imagine how many people visit, work in or use such a place, every single day. It boggles the mind, doesn’t it?

For now, let’s focus on the example of a retail centre. This space is likely to have multiple shops (all of which with their own staff, customers and management personnel, as well as health, safety and security concerns), car parks (which need to be monitored regularly), cafeterias and eateries, toilet facilities (including baby changing facilities) and an on-site office for the smooth running of things – and that’s just for starters.

The manager of such a facility will need to be able to speak to everyone, at any time. Two-way radios are the only clear and reliable way to achieve this. The manager will need to respond to safety issues, security concerns and any other problems that arise, she/he will be responsible for emergency procedures, use of resources and the smooth operation of the site itself, every single day.

Even analogue radios struggled with these tasks, so now most sites are using digital radios to relieve reception loss in various signal ‘black spots’ that were plaguing the bigger and more complex sites around the world.

For the modern facilities manager, a quick, clean and efficient two-way radio network, capable of supporting each and every layer of management, security, outside contractors, businesses, vendors and any other related group is absolutely essential to the smooth running of things.

Two-way radios are a massively important element of most contemporary businesses. The same system employed by the emergency services, the armed forces, building contractors and police is being used, every day, in our leisure facilities, shopping centres, office spaces and housing properties. Two-way radios are an amazing, indispensable part of day-to-day life across countless industries the world over.

 

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Do I Need a Radio License in the UK?

The short answer is yes. If you are planning on using a radio system for commercial purposes anywhere in the UK, you will need a radio broadcast licence. According to Ofcom’s official site,

“If you use a radio system for your business then you will need a licence from Ofcom. Business radio users range from taxi companies and factories, to hospitals, care homes, industrial sites and transport operators. To begin the licensing process – and learn more about the specific licence you’ll need – (it then diverts you to a special application link)”.

The quote below is from Icom UK.co.uk. They offer a comprehensive page that you should probably check out before buying your radios. Their advice as is follows:

“You will need a radio licence to operate your two way business radios. This is issued by the Government Agency, Ofcom. Licensed frequencies are allocated on a case-by-case basis. You can get your dealer to program them into your radio”.

They also advise the buyer to,

“Get your local dealer to help with the licence application, they will advise on the best way to apply to get the channel you need”.

And also say that,

“If you wish to use your radios all over the UK and are not based in one fixed location, you can apply for a Business Radio Simple UK licence which is £75, renewable every 5 years”.

 

On the subject of price, it does appear that I can’t tell you how much it’s likely to cost, as pricing is an individual thing and it depends on your needs. When asked how much a licence will cost, Icom UK says,

 

“OK, the big question…unfortunately that is the one question we cannot answer, but your local Icom business radio dealer can. Often you will find that the radios you actually need are much more affordable than some you might have first looked at. Icom have a very comprehensive range at all price levels while still having the same quality and you could consider spreading the immediate cost by leasing rather than outright purchase”.

Icom then provide a link to finding a UK dealer, which I’ll add to this answer HERE.

Basically, any business radio use will require a licence, so it’s pretty important that you learn as much as you can about them (and what they entitle you to do).

Do not be disheartened, however, gaining license to broadcast isn’t as difficult as you might think and the costs are likely to be more manageable than you’re probably dreading they will be. Whatever you think of it, you’ll have to pay the fee, that’s just the way it is. In America, the FCC governs the licensing. Here in the UK, broadcast licensing is maintained and regulated by Ofcom (as stated earlier).

According to Walkie-Talkie radio.co.uk, there is a reason beyond naked profiteering:

“Most countries have some government agency in charge of who can use what radio frequencies. This is necessary to ensure that different organizations can use radio communications effectively without interfering with each other”.

So do a little research, fill out a couple of forms and move on to the next problem.

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Shop & Chat: Radios in Retail

For us, the customers, shopping can be a fun-filled trip into town on a pleasant sun-dappled afternoon, complete with good company, interesting conversation and tasty treats.

However, a shop is actually a lot more than a pleasing Saturday afternoon’s distraction for the people who run it. The average high street store is, in fact, a tightly run combination of clever marketing, well-planned store layouts and hard working employees, all of which come together to create a state of the art consumer environment. Two-way radios are a big part of this operation.

How? Well, there’s health and safety to consider first and foremost. Shoppers need to be protected, with rapid medical attention provided should any problem befall them.

Then, there’s security of course. Allegedly, in 2009 alone, over 800,000 people were arrested for shoplifting. The following year, The BBC reported that shoplifting had cost UK stores £4.4bn in less than a year. Apparently, thefts add around £180 to the average family’s annual shopping bill. Security employees need to be more vigilant than ever, but without imposing their presence on (and thus discouraging) innocent shoppers.

A reliable two-way radio system is a great way to achieve this. Using radios, security personnel can monitor a potential situation quietly and discreetly, questioning (and if need be, apprehending) the suspect without causing too much of a fuss.

But those aren’t the only reasons that radios are vital to a retail environment. Staff and shoppers need to be protected from potentially volatile situations as well. We’ve all seen a seemingly mundane situation grow out of control for one reason or another and it’s down to the store’s management to see that these incidents are controlled and diffused in a quick and professional manner.

Of course, we also need to consider the larger retail environments like shopping malls and large centres of commerce. Across areas as big and sprawling as these can be, security, safety and customer comfort are all key concerns that become that much harder to monitor and manage. On that scale, every concern becomes amplified. In these situations, radios need to be reliable, able to operate over long distances and run with a relatively long battery life.

Two-way radios are ideal for the task at hand, allowing management to oversee complex operations and staff to perform their duties in a safe and respectful working environment. Without two way radios, a Saturday afternoon’s shopping would be a far less appealing prospect…

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What Causes the ‘Static’ Sound on Walkie-Talkies?

Essentially, radio static during a call is a sign that the signal strength is degrading (or that there is no signal coming through at all). When signal strength degrades sufficiently, the static sound emerges.

When there is no message coming through, it’s a slightly different story. A walkie-talkie has what’s known as a ‘squelch’ control circuit that keeps tabs on the signal strength. The squelch circuit will mute the speaker as soon as it realizes that there is no signal coming through to the device. This is, essentially, the same function as your TV has when it cuts off an unavailable channel after a preset time. However, in the moments before your walkie-talkie ‘squelches’ the sound, you will hear static, or ‘white noise’ as its also called.

‘Squelching’ is a pretty vital part of any/all broadcasting equipment. The method used in your walkie-talkie is called a ‘carrier squelch’ and is more than likely to be manually adjustable.

From Wikipedia (as of 17th of May 2013):

“A carrier squelch or noise squelch is the most simple variant of all. It operates strictly on the signal strength, such as when a television mutes the audio or blanks the video on “empty” channels, or when a walkie talkie mutes the audio when no signal is present. In some designs, the squelch threshold is preset. For example, television squelch settings are usually preset. Receivers in base stations at remote mountain top sites are usually not adjustable remotely from the control point.

In devices such as two-way radios (also known as radiotelephones), the squelch can be adjusted with a knob, others have push buttons or a sequence of button presses. This setting adjusts the threshold at which signals will open (un-mute) the audio channel. Backing off the control will turn on the audio, and the operator will hear white noise (also called “static” or squelch noise) if there is no signal present”.

So what is ‘white noise?’ According to Joe Shambro, writing for About.com’s guide to home recording,

“White noise is a static sound that has equal energy on every frequency. Think about this for a second: every frequency from 20Hz to 20kHz is equally represented at the same velocity; this type of frequency scale is called a “linear” scale. This gives the noise a uniform, static sound that the human ear detects as somewhat harsh and heavy-handed toward the high frequencies. However, white noise represents a very unnatural way of presenting frequency data in terms of how our ears work.”

If you’re experiencing signal degradation on your walkie-talkie, there may be several causes for this. ‘Wireless Woman’ a blogger with an excellent site about two-way radios, has this to say:

Signal loss can happen in any number of places in the system. Antennas may not properly direct the signal toward the horizon. Cables to repeaters may need replacement. Connectors can be corroded. Finally, the quality of the system may not be adequate. The old adage “you get what you pay for” certainly applies to two-way radios, and their quality does vary. Receiver specifications, engineering, tuning, the antenna, and even design generally improve as the price increases. This really happened: Two public safety officers were at a scene. One was using a radio that cost more that twice as much as the other. Guess which one could hear and which one couldn’t?”

So there you go.

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The Long Road Home: Radios for Transports and Fleets

According to the UK Government, there were an estimated 5.2 billion bus passenger journeys undertaken on our roads in 2011/2012. Public and private transportation is not only big business; it is also of massive importance to the smooth running of the country.

Whilst only 14% of the UK’s 25 million commuters travel to work by bus or train, this still accounts for over 1.7 million people. In order for a country this reliant on public transport to survive and thrive, it is absolutely imperative that transport workers can communicate with each other in a quick, efficient manner, fuelling an industry that, by necessity, spans the length and breadth of the nation.

Two-way radios provide the solutions to this monumental challenge.

Rail, bus, fleet and trucking management make use of two-way radios in order to keep up to speed with vital information. Drivers and managers can easily contact command and control centres, as well as liaising with depot staff and even customers, all due to using their radios. Together with integrated GPS systems, radios help transport and fleet workers to track deliveries in real time, as well as informing would-be passengers or commuters of any delays or early arrivals.

But it isn’t just truckers making deliveries, commuters travelling to and from work and trains running on time. Public transport is one of the most important aspects of the tourism industry, itself a large part of Britain’s economy. Visitors flock from almost every country on Earth in order to visit popular sites like Stonehenge, The Tower of London, Buckingham Palace and the beautiful city of Bath. Without a reliable public transport system, our tourism industry would be seriously harmed.

So, in order to keep things running as smoothly as possible, all relevant personnel are equipped with a two-way radio so that they can keep in direct contact with their colleagues, peers and managers. This also allows for speedy customer service, as well as up-to-date and reliable information.

Health and safety is also a huge concern regarding public transport and, since the tragedy of the London bombings 8 years ago, security is also a large issue. Workers specializing in either area find their radios to be among the most vital of their tools.

Transport companies employ a veritable army of security staff, as well as first-aiders all of whom are connected via rugged and reliable two-way radios.

Without radios, the country’s public transport system could very well come to a standstill. The roads and railways of Britain are, at least in some ways, kept in operation via a network of two-way radios.

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Hotels, Holiday Resorts & Radios: A Match Maid in Heaven

The tourism industry is a big one, with various holiday seasons bringing in huge revenues around the world, year in, year out. In some cases, tourism profits are actually vital to the survival of small towns and resort areas, as well as major factors in the host country’s GDP.

Approximately 30 Million people visit the UK from all over the world each year (and we don’t even get nice weather!). Drawn to our many sites of cultural interest, even more of historical interest, or just a slice on English country life, these tourists are actually a considerable part of our economy.

Holiday resorts and hotels are an extremely important variable in this equation. In the first instance, the availability of airport parking, conveniently situated bed and breakfast facilities, or luxurious hotel/spa complexes are of paramount importance to our tourism industry. However, in the second, garnering a reputation for sterling customer service is also absolutely key, both to the business survival of a hotel/resort facility and to the continued attractiveness of our little cluster of islands.

In the UK, we offer our visitors an intriguing mixture of world-class nightlife, casinos and holiday destinations with calmer, more sedate activities like country walks, historical tours and shopping opportunities.

In order to keep our visitors happy, British hotel staff are using two-way radios more and more in their quest to deliver perfect service and garner that all-important word-of-mouth recommendation, as well as that even-more-important second booking.

Two-way radios provide instant customer service, as well as an increased level of health and safety awareness. There is a great comfort to be had in the knowledge that a dedicated, world-class staff are only a click away from delivering anything you could possibly want, at any time you could possibly want it.

The ability to liaise with housekeeping staff, for example, can allow cleaners to focus on a specific room, adding a priority to that particular space that will greatly reduce the time spent waiting around in the bar. These staff, rather than being rushed off their feet, can quickly and easily arrange for fresh linen to be sent up, or clean towels and so on and so forth…

Also, with business professionals carrying potentially sensitive equipment or information, a good hotel will be very security conscious. Two-way radios allow for an enhanced security presence, which is a key selling point of any hotel or resort complex.

Ultimately, two-way radios are becoming a hugely important piece of our tourism industry.

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Keeping You Safe: Two-Way Radios in High Security

These are troubling times for our nation and indeed for the world at large. Our little corner of the history books will be blighted by a global recession and civil unrest as political opportunists fan the flames of religious and racial tensions. In the midst of all this turbulence, there’s us, the regular people, caught up in the middle of the maelstrom.

In a world fraught with buzzwords like ‘terrorism’ ‘counter-terrorism’ ‘contamination’ ‘organized crime’ and ‘data theft’, its easy to feel like you’re always at risk, only ever one diplomatic blunder or power hungry madman away from World War 3. In such a world, an increase in security is often felt to be the only way to achieve peace of mind. Enter the world’s high security professionals.

Whether providing security for public figures, guarding prominent buildings, patrolling national boundaries or keeping the Internet safe from hackers, high security is an enormous and varied industry that demands much from its workers. Public and private security firms are stretched to deal with all the issues and potential problems that they have to tackle.

Fortunately, two-way radios make their work a lot easier. The same type of radios that are used by the military can be affordably purchased by the security services, as and when needed.

These radios are rugged and durable, they can withstand almost any weather type and they have strong, long lasting batteries that allow for hours of field work. Two-way radios are by far the quickest and most reliable form of portable communication, not as clumsy as a pager or as temperamental as a phone. In addition, two-way radios are incredibly easy to use, meaning that training is a doddle.

Working alongside state-of-the-art surveillance technology, non-lethal weaponry and bleeding edge computer security programs, the simple, effective (and simply effective) two-way radio is still the security services first and finest friend.

Whether on foot or in vehicles, whether standing guard or co-ordinating the efforts of a team, two-way radios are an absolutely indispensable part of the high security industry, making them a vital component of the nation’s peace of mind.

You’ll find two-way radios helping to keep secure our data centres, cash warehouses, government buildings, military bases, secure storage facilities and even more sites than we have the space to name.

The world may be a conflicted, sometimes frightening place, but the high security workers around the globe are helping us to sleep at night and using two-way radios to do it.

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