Paul Golder writes for the Brentwood Gazette

After 14 years we’ve finally had a major upgrade and clearout in the studio and invested in new equipment and furniture!

The main component of any radio station is the mixing desk which controls all of the music and microphones and sends signals to transmitters and the internet. It’s confusingly known as “the desk”, as we needed custom-built desks to house the mixing desk and hide hundreds of cables too.

Our old one was bought about a year before we went full time in 2007 – at that time we were broadcasting on FM for 28 day periods every six months under a trial service and also producing about 100 hours of podcasts too.

Since we went full time 13 and a half years ago the desk has been on 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, barring the occasional power cut, so we definitely got our money’s worth out of it.

However it was starting to go wrong from time to time and I’m sure I saw steam coming out of it once too. So the new desk had to come in, and with it new cables, new furniture, and a new carpet and signage too.

One of the first people to get their hands on the equipment was Vicki Michelle, former star of ‘Allo ‘Allo! who for the last three years has been presenting an upbeat music show every Sunday afternoon at 2pm.

Unfortunately we weren’t able to hold a party or celebrate getting everyone together – maybe in 2021 …

I’d like to thank all of the Phoenix FM volunteers who helped to make this happen and especially our station engineer Tony Smith who went above and beyond in getting everything working perfectly. Onto the next project!