New radio system for the ‘Women’s’ hospital in Melbourne
One of Melbourne’s oldest hospitals, the Royal Women’s Hospital which is more commonly referred to as ‘The Women’s’ was relocated to a new campus adjacent to the Royal Melbourne Hospital. As part of this project a new purpose-built facility was erected with eight levels above ground and five levels below ground for car parking and building services.
Under the electrical contract for the project, Elecraft as prime electrical contractor approached AA Radio Services to design and supply the two-way radio system for the complex. With the necessity for total radio coverage of the building and a very high level of reliability required within the system, AA Radio paid particular attention to radio coverage as well as making sure that equipment recommendations were of the highest quality.
The system comprised two repeaters with full stand-by power back-up, as well as a simple multi-coupling system to allow both repeaters to operate into the internal antenna system within the building. For overall reliability Tait repeaters were chosen and the radio units for the users were from Icom, thus combining the best attributes for the application from all of the available sources.
Towards the completion of the project Elecraft highlighted the fact that their own internal radio system was struggling to give sufficient coverage for their building commissioning works so AA Radio re-configured their radios to operate on the new system. As a result Elecraft then experienced total building coverage and were able to fully commission the electrical systems without any problems.
When the time came for final acceptance of the radio system by the building tenants, Elecraft knew the system provided more than specified, because they had been using the system under actual working conditions. In the commissioning stage of several weeks Elecraft had not been able to find any areas where communications were weak within the entire project environs.
This system was another practical example of the ability of AA Radio Services to design, supply, install and commission radio systems to meet and exceed the client’s needs.