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March 07
17th.We will be broadcasting the 'Knignts of Harmony' barbershop singers from the Elgiva Theatre in Chesham on Saturday 17th March starting at 7.30pm
For further information on the singers click: Knights of Harmony For booking information click: Elgiva Theatre February 07 SMHR is about to move premises. We have been in our current building for the past 28 years and with the re-development of the site, we shall be moving to a new area in the next few weeks. July 2006 30th.The UK said goodbye to the BBC's 'Top of the pops' on Sunday the 30th July 2006 and two of our presenters, Martin Kinch and Mark Withey were at the BBC studios to see the last show being recorded. Top of the Pops was first broadcast in 1964, from a converted church in Manchester and was presented by Jimmy Savile. Almost four million people tuned in to the hour-long final which was shown on BBC 2. Sir Jimmy Savile, who of course is no stranger to Stoke Mandeville Hospital, returned to co-host the final show, with a programme looking back over its 42-year history. Donned in a golden tracksuit, Sir Jim signed off with his famous catchphrase: "Don't forget it's number one, it's still Top of the Pops." He was joined by other former presenters of the show which included, Mike Read, Dave Lee Travis, Edith Bowman, Reggie Yates, Tony Blackburn, Pat Sharp, Sarah Cawood, Rufus Hound, and Janice Long Martin and Mark met up for a chat with Sir Jimmy and they also had a chat with Dave Lee Travis who said that he remembered being interviewed by Martin in the SMHR studios back in 1980! Our picture shows all the presenters of the show and also Martin and Mark (bottom right) who somehow managed to get in the very last shot of the very last show. How's about that then?
March 06 We will be broadcasting live 'The Light City' (TLC) Chorale, one of the UKs finest praise and worship Gospel choirs with musical directors David Elevique and Jenny Ingram Brown
February 06 Many thanks to the Honda Goldwing Club (Thames Valley Region) for their kind donation of £500 towards our move to new premises. For further information about the Thames Valley Group click: Thames Valley Goldwing Owners Club
October 05 Sir Jimmy Savile recently paid a visit to our studios to present
a long service award to Martin Kinch. Sir Jimmy said that his radio is permanently tuned into us when he is at the hospital and that it is a really good station because of the mix of music that we play. Sir Jimmy told TV and press reporters that all the volunteers at the station did a great job and added that hospital radio was very important for patients who can sometimes feel nervous and frightened while they are in hospital. He also told Martin that in all his years of broadcasting, he never actually played a record, he concentrated on the links while someone else put the records on the turntables. It's not the first time the two of them have been in a studio together, Back in the 80s Jimmy invited Martin to spend the day at Radio 1 with him and watch him present his 'Old record club'. Martin said it was a great day and that with just a few seconds notice Jimmy told me I was doing the next few links, I didn't have time to think about it and I ended up co- presenting the show with him.
Jimmy Savile with Martin Kinch
September 05 The audience awaits 'Proms in the Park' which was broadcast on Stoke Mandeville Hospital Radi
August 05 29th. We shall be re-broadcasting City & Hemel Hospital Radio's live outside broadcast from the Marlows shopping centre today. Its our colleagues annual fundraising event, coinciding with a sponsored 80 hour broadcast. 27th. Our server crashed today causing the station to go off air. As the computer was being repaired, we re-broadcast City & Hemel Hospital Radio using our ISDN facility. Upon inspection of the computer, the video card, motherboard and harddrive had failed due to a faulty power supply. Our thanks go to 'Upgrades' of Hemel Hempstead for their kind assistance in getting us back on air over this bank holiday weekend.. July 05 17th. Aylesbury-On-Sea. We broadcast our entire days output from Vale Park with Aylesbury Borough Council's theme day. The weather was beautiful and the event was a huge success with thousands of visitors.
Sand Castle Competition
Donkey Rides
SMHR Tent May 05 The Chairman and President of Stoke Mandeville Hospital Radio joined with other members of the station on Friday 20th May to receive a cheque for £300 which had been kindly donated by Mr Sera'j Islam the manager of the Shaad restaurant in Aston Clinton. Sera'j had very kindly organised a charity function for SMHR where £5 was donated for everyone who ate there on the 9th of May. 58 people enjoyed a sumptuous meal that evening and the cheque was generously rounded up to £300
Bingo on the Ward's  One of our recent winners was Gladys, seen here with Mark, Stella
and Jeanette, receiving chocolates and a gardening voucher.  Our second winner was Alfred, seen again with Mark, Stella and
Jeanette. Alfred was so overjoyed at winning such a lovely doll;
Alfred and his wife are going to take to Ireland for their great
granddaughter. Alfred said the gardening vouchers were an added
bonus. Would you or your company like to donate a prize to help a worthy cause? Bingo on the ward is once a month on SMHR for the patients and staff at Stoke Mandeville Hospital.
Fundraising outside PC World, Aylesbury
 April 05 Due to a major technical problem in the US, our internet site and emails were down over the weekend of 9th & 10th April. 'Fatcow', our ISP had all of their 33,000 customers 'lost in space' whilst their engineers rectified technical problems. We have successfully upgraded all of our computer operating systems
to Windows XP Pro, as it transpires that our playout software made
by 'P Squared' is withdrawing support for Windows 2000 during the
course of the year. Machines had to be upgraded to the newer platform
so that technical support can continue. March 05 Much work is underway within the members section of our website. Paper copies of our minutes of meetings and other publications are being converted to PDF documents and placed on the site. There is so much information stored there that pages were taking longer and longer to load. February 05 Preperations are now well under way to launch our appeal to raise £45,000 in order to be able to relocate our studio complex into a new part of the hospital. SMH is under re-developement and our studio complex will be knocked down in early 2006. Twenty Seven years of broadcasting history will be moving to somewhere within the hospital grounds and we need to be ready when we get the call. From Terry Meades: I was invited to speak to the ladies of the
Fairford Leys Woman's Institute about Stoke Mandeville Hospital
Radio. It was like doing a show on air, but this time I could see
my audience, it reminded me of my amateur dramatic days and all
the ladies were a great bunch to be with.
January 05 Studio 1's technical furniture has finally been installed! It means that for the first time, presenters can monitor their programme in stereo. Previously, due to space restraints, one monitor speaker sat on the floor under the desk. Custom speaker shelves have been installed at high level so a pair of Spendor BC1a monitors can be fitted. A new studio clock pattress has also been made which combines 'Mic Live', studio 'On Air', OBIT and telephone call warning lamps. This now brings the specification into line with studio 2. Our Martin Kinch officially celebrated 25 years service with Stoke Mandeville Hospital Radio in a special ceremony this month. June Snowden from the Hospital Radio Association, is pictured here presenting Martin with his 25 years certificate in the 'Jimmy Savile' lounge. Martin has in fact been with us for 26 years, but he kept it quiet - Once we found out we thought we would surprise him...but they don't do 26 year certificates....
Below, members past and present, including former member Denise Summers, Mayor of Aylesbury. founder members Mary and Chris Payne, Dave Ralph, and our President, Freda Roberts MBE JP (and former Mayor of Aylesbury) and Terry Meades, Chairman.
We would all like to wish Martin continued success for the future!
Dec 04 Stoke Mandeville Hospital Radio were once again entertaining the Christmas shoppers in Aylesbury town centre
Three of our presenters were recently competing against the nation on ITV's Live and interactive "Great British Pop Test" which was hosted by Gabby Logan and Neil Fox. Mark and Stella Withey and Martin Kinch were chosen to be in the two teams of 100 men and 100 women. The teams were competing against the thousands of people playing along at home, and it was also Men verses Women in the studio. (The men won !) Mark was interviewed by Neil Fox about his huge collection of records and CDs Mark, Stella and Martin also got through to the final round of top scorers which meant that they had a chance of winning £10,000 as the computer picked out a name at random. None of our three won the cash but they all had a great day and
managed to have a chat with the presenters after the show.
Pictured are Stella, presenter Neil Fox, Martin and Mark. July 04 1st. Our engineer spent the afternoon on site with a BT
engineer to try and locate the ADSL fault. Unfortunately, the fault
has not been rectified as there have been many changes to the wiring
over the years and not all of the records have been updated. They
did notice however, a big hole in the ground near to where the BT
cables run where they are building the new hospital. Its just possible
a digger may have....... June 04 10th. The afternoon was spent updating the operating system and anti-virus software on our six computers. 22nd. Due to the adverse weather conditions, we have experienced 5 power-cuts in 2 days, resulting in our server failing. We had to go off air until the evening of 23rd in order to repair the server, which failed due to a faulty hard drive and a stick of RAM. These items have now been replaced and we are now back on air. Our thanks are extended to 'Upgrades' of Hemel Hempstead for providing
a fast turn-a-round repair service. 30th. ADSL Update. Three BT engineers have now attended site and all of them are unable to locate the fault between the telephone exchange and our studio complex. BT senior management have told us that when the regular area engineer returns from his holidays on 3rd July, he will attend site and try and locate the fault where the others have failed! February 04 3rd. We have fitted a GPI (General Purpose Interface) card into each of the studio computers with a view to automating the IRN bulletins when the station is in automation. Our programme controller is now preparing the schedules to incorporate this new feature, whilst our engineer is busy building a box of tricks to interface it all. We shall be trying out the shedules during the weekends, starting at the back-end of February. 14th. The motherboard failed on the server pc during the night resulting in the station going off-air. Our supplier, Upgrades of Hemel Hemepstead, turned the pc around in an hour of the business opening and we were back on-air by noon. This is a very unusual failure and we contribute the unstable mains supply to the hospital as one of the main suspects. As mentioned in previous reports, we are hoping to replace the exisitng optic-fibre link between the studio and transmitter this spring. We have been put off-air in the past due to vermin nibbling thru the fibre link along its 1.2km run. Negotiations with the hospital trust have been fruitful and we are now able to use part of their exisitng telephone infrastructure to route our signal. We are going to have to install a 550 metre run of cable between the studio and the telephone PABX room in order to make it all happen. Our AGM will be held on Sunday 22nd February. All members are encoraged
to attend this meeting. 27th. The day was spent house-keeping, updating the operating systems on all 6 of our computers. January 04 The New Year started with the breakdown of our logger computer! This computer records the station output for legal reasons. Upon investigation, it was found that the motherboard had failed. A standby computer was pressed into service within 24 hours, whilst the faulty machine is set away for repair. We are hoping to complete the new woodwork in studio 1 this month. We are having a new clock pattress and speaker shelves manufactured. This will make more room for guests in the studio. We have been in negotiations for the past several months with the
facilities department of the hospital over being able to rewire
our audio distribution between the studio and the amplifiers on
the wards and the AM transmitter. We are pleased that the negotiations
have been successful and that a programme of replacing 30 year-old
cabling around the site can begin. The existing cables once they
leave the studio, cannot be traced, and non of the existing members
of hospital staff can remember where they go. Jan 8th was an important date for our librarian and Solid
Gold presenter Martin Kinch as it was 25 years ago on that date
that he joined the station.....he got lost in the Hospital on his
first night! 13th. We have upgraded the presenter microphone in studio 1 to a 'Studio Projects' C1 condenser mic. This new microphone will give the presenters more depth in their presentation. Studio 2 will also benifit from the same microphone later in the month. We have been donated a brand new PC by a local company to use for streaming the internet. Upgrades of Hemel Hempstead have kindly donated the machine as a result of canvassing local companies for their support. December 03 12th. Our new website has become active this month. It is also timed to coincide with a sponsorship deal with a local Internet provider 'Nildram', who have kindly provided an ADSL Internet connection for us. Friends and family of those in hospital can now request or dedicate a song from anywhere in the world! Nildram is one of the UK's biggest independent Internet providers. Their head office is based within 500 metres of the hospital site and naturally they were the obvious choice for us to approach. More information about our association with Nildram will follow in the New Year. Since the internet access has come on line, we are now able to update the operating system on our computers with ease, as well as access to schedule station output or in the event of breakdowns, remote diagnosis. The Internet has made the world a smaller place for us and we fully intend to exploit this new facility and hope to have more features on the website as a result. One idea is to use the computer playout system's facility to show the listener what has just played, what is currently playing and what is comming up next. This can also incorporate a picture of the artists. 20th. On Saturday SHMR had a fund-raising Outside Broadcast from the centre of Aylesbury. As it can be imagined, the town centre was crammed packed with shoppers. We managed to raise around £400 and would like to thank those who contributed to the upkeep of the station. Whilst some of our colleagues were shaking tins in Aylesbury town centre, others were recording the Christmas carol service at the St Albans Cathedral. The St Albans Bach Choir hold an annual carol service in the west wing of the cathedral. This year, for the first time in its history, the organisers were having to turn people away as the wing was full. The recording was a joint production with our colleagues from Hemel Hospital Radio. The Christmas carol service will be broadcast at 7pm on Christmas day.
23rd. We have agreed with the hospital management to replace our existing optic-fibre link between the studio and the transmitter (a 1.3km run). In the summer, we dropped off-air for a week, due to a rodent nibbling through the fibre. The break took a lot of finding as the route is quite diverse through the hospitals underground ducts and tunnels. Whilst the fibre link is immune from external interference (mains hum etc), the link does not have enough audio headroom and we have had to attenuate the signal to get over this problem. The plan is to use the existing telephone infrastructure to deliver our signal to the transmitter. The route is just as long but it means we can send the full signal down the line to the transmitter and therefore the quality and depth will be much better. It also means we can connect the remote control facilities of the transmitter and relay them back to the studio for local indication. It is also intended at the same time, to replace the existing circuits between the studio and the distribution amplifiers on the wards around the site and even run a feed to the resturant. |
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