Radio Lonsdale and BAFC

[Ralph]

RADIO LONSDALE IS BACK (AT HOLKER STREET)
Thanks to Peter Chesher

Radio Lonsdale, the hospital radio station at Furness General Hospital, performed successful trials of their new Internet connection at Holker Street during the Barrow v Brackley Town game.

The trials were so successful that the station continued to broadcast the whole of the game to the patients, staff and visitors at the hospital. Barrow duly obliged by securing a fine 3-1 victory. This was the first time in 20 years that Radio Lonsdale has broadcast a live game from Barrow AFC. In fact just a few years ago the charity was down to a few hardy members and almost folded due to lack of interest.

The last couple of years have seen Radio Lonsdale rise from the ashes and membership now stands at over 25, the most since the 1990s. The station’s sports team has been practising since the very first friendly game of the 2014/15 season, but were hampered by the lack of a reliable, affordable communications network at Holker Street.

The Barrow AFC board kindly stepped in and offered free use of their broadband system if the charity extended the network to the Press Box. Radio Lonsdale held a working weekend at the ground and completed the installation whilst the team was busy securing another win at Oxford City.

The hospital radio station had come full circle as in its early days all of the station’s broadcasts came from the football ground using a private telephone line!

Following these successful trials, Radio Lonsdale will now advertise their first official live broadcast from Holker Street, the Barrow v Solihull Moors game on Saturday 14 February. It is hoped to hold a fund-raising collection prior to the game and during half time along with a publicity drive to attract new members.

The Radio Lonsdale ‘SportsTalk’ team wishes to thank director Peter Garbacz, manager Darren Edmondson, PA announcer Darren Herbert and the whole Barrow AFC team for the excellent support received in re-establishing the hospital radio station as part of the Holker Street set up.

Radio Lonsdale is a registered charity and provides free radio entertainment to patients, staff and visitors of Furness General Hospital and is one of the oldest hospital radio stations in the UK, dating back to 1949! The current name was officially adopted following the move to the old North Lonsdale hospital in Barrow during 1965 and in December of this year the charity celebrates 50 years as “Radio Lonsdale”.

[Steeley]

Fantastic work.

[Bennyfromormsgill]

That is great news i remember them broadcasting from the old wooden stand, steelworks end, above a little snack bar with just enough room for one person in a little cabin

[Bigfathoss]

That is indeed good news. I have requested twice now that the club offer cloud internet access throughout the ground (every pub can do it so why can't we?). Just for latest score updates and whatnot. Obviously no answer of course.

[mrsenario]

Hopefully they all find the pressbox a warmer place to work as the maintenance squad have insulated the ceiling and back and installed worktops and boards and a new floor....still a way to go to paint out and finish but not to far off.
must be a huge improvement even now!!

[Adam29]

Would be good if we could get a hold of the commentary aftwerwards and mix it into our highlights

[Wintergreen]

As if being in hospital wasn't bad enough...

[Ste Story]

Great stuff

[Ste Story]

Would be good if we could get a hold of the commentary aftwerwards and mix it into our highlights

good shout

[mickmike wilson]

That is indeed good news. I have requested twice now that the club offer cloud internet access throughout the ground (every pub can do it so why can't we?). Just for latest score updates and whatnot. Obviously no answer of course.

This really should be on offer to everyone at the ground in this day & age, helps with the match day experience that the club are promoting, win/win all round then.

Fantastic news (re) Radio Lonsdale, I can remember several times back in the day tuning in to BAFC games when I was laid up in the Ozzy after various orthopaedic surgeries & being able to listen to the games certainly raised my sprits at the time, well done all concerned.

PS, You fellow Golden Oldies, Remember the Pink Final on Saturday's........Always amazed me how they got that out so damn quick?

If my memory is not playing tricks here it seem like 30 mins after FT it would be in the shops (groups of lads & men would be outside waiting for delivery) with every score, league tables & loads of reports etc

What year did it stop?

[cheshepe_RL]

Hello folks,
I'm Pete Chesher MBE, "Chesh" will do nicely though! I'm the Chief Engineer and a presenter on 'SportsTalk' on Radio Lonsdale. As Ralph kindly posted we have just finished the installation of a CAT6 internet connection between the Cross Bar and the Press Box. We trialled the system during the Barrow v Brackley game, with the intention of broadcasting live coverage of the second half. However, although we have a few minor technical improvements to make, the trials went superbly and we ended up commentating on the whole game!

We'll be meeting at the studios this week and will make the improvements in time for the Solihull Moors game on 14th Feb, which is our official 'Go Live' date. As we are a charity and have to pay for all of our own kit, we hope to have a pre-match and half time collection to refill the bank account after spending a lot of pennies on the football coverage equipment. Our members did all of the work which saved us a packet. Much of the equipment has been sponsored by the Cumberland Building Society, BAE Systems GAYE Scheme, Oil States Barrow and a donation from the Furness Fishing Association so we are very grateful to these organisations.

The Press Box is fantastic, thanks for all your work! Many of the visiting media folks comment on how good the facilities are for the press at Barrow! Some of our members report from the occasional away game and they really do appreciate how good our press box is!

It's early days and we have a number of improvements to make. We stream the commentary back to the hospital using Icecast streaming software and WinAmp for the play out. It seems to work very well but we are looking into ways of getting information back from the studio quicker. In the longer term we may look into the possibility of streaming the commentary further afield but we need to double check any licencing requirements and potential costs for the charity first. Our primary reason for providing this service is the constant stream of requests by our patients but if we can provide a useful service for other Barrow fans that will be a bonus.

In response to the requests for use of our material for use on the match highlights video, we have formed a good relationship with the club and once we have settled in and resolved any outstanding minor problems, we'll gladly provide the commentary for your use. We have to record our output to meet Ofcom regulations now that we are live anyway. We are already holding discussions with the club about providing our facilities for a regular podcast from our studios.

Finally, I'd like to thank everyone at the club, especially Pete Garbacz, Jamie Reid, Darren Edmondson and PA announcer Darren Herbert, for their wonderful support for this project. The club has been extremely positive and right from the start has assisted us in every possible way to ensure that once again Barrow AFC home games are broadcast live to FGH. The free use of the club's broadband internet connection means that there are no long term running costs which could have scuppered this project before it had even started!

At present Radio Lonsdale's coverage can be heard on Channel 1 on the patient Hospedia bedside units and on Channel 5 in all public areas at Furness General Hospital. For further information please visit: http://www.radio-lonsdale.co.uk

[DaveC]

Good luck Chesh, I remember my days broadcasting with Radio Lonsdale, 87.7 FM
You guys provide a valuable service to the poorly folk of Furness, keep it up guys and gals.

[cheshepe_RL]

Thanks Dave,
things have moved on a bit and installing a private line, which you guys used would have cost the charity a fortune as the old line disappeared when they flattened the old stand. The board have been great and offered free use of their internet connection if we paid for the final cable between the office area and the press box. We installed it a fortnight ago, tried it last week and it works a treat, mate!

Our new headsets (headphones with boom MIC's) arrived today and will look and sound superb. We are going to publicise the charity at next week's home game. Ha! Ha! Our members will freeze outside whilst we commentate in the press box (next to the new radiator that I am ordering later tonight)!

Enjoying this immensely and it also attracts new younger members who are interested in a sports media course at University or College.

We won't always get it right, but we'll try our best and we also plan on involving the supporters in our half time or post match interviews once we get established.

best regards,

Chesh

[audigex]

That is indeed good news. I have requested twice now that the club offer cloud internet access throughout the ground (every pub can do it so why can't we?). Just for latest score updates and whatnot. Obviously no answer of course.

Without getting into excessive technical discussion, providing outdoor, secure, cloud internet over a football stadium footprint for an average of 1300 people in a burst-bandwidth (ie everyone uses it for 2 hours then goes away for a week) isn't a trivial undertaking.

Is a silly cost for a system which will see around 50 hours of use per year. It's not as simple as plugging a £15 router into the office broadband connection: the installation at Lords apparently cost upwards of £15k for installation only, not including bandwidth and maintenance costs. Lords gets a lot more visitors than we do, but the footprint of the ground isn't that much bigger.

Besides which, what's wrong with your mobile coverage? If you're on Three/EE/Orange/T-Mobile you're less than 100ft from a mast, and the other networks don't have bad coverage at the ground either.

[cheshepe_RL]

I use Vodafone which has a great connection in the press box, our other presenters are on EE which is brilliant. Andy Carlisle uses an App on his EE I-phone which constantly downloads Conference North scores for us! Agree that the cost of providing Cloud coverage will be massive for a club the size of ours, even with Mr. Casson's cash, besides he's not going to spend it on an installation when there are plans to rebuild the ground in the future!

The poster for our first planned live broadcast attached. We plan to include 'spectator's view' at half time - No Swearing please - We'll be going out LIVE!