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BUYER’S GUIDE
RADIOWORLD
Transmitters
April 2020
Four Generations of Nautel Under One Roof Even the oldest still works and is available at a moment’s notice
units and a retuned ND transmitter for the other two ports of the triple coupled site. As I understand it, this was the first time that Nautel had provided a kit and combiner of this type to combine two blue AMPFET transmitters. In another instance, I had to install a Nautel NX10 at a site in an emergency; the total time taken from arriving onsite to going on-air was eight hours. This time included earthing, mains wiring, audio and telemetry (SNMP) and control via simple I/O to interface the main/standby TX selection. The NX10 worked right out of the box. The NX10 was supplied to ARN by Sonifex, Nautel’s in-country partner. Sonifex has supplied many transmitters to Australian broadcasters since the mid-2000s and working with Karen Olliver’s team has been a true pleasure. In my humble opinion, there is no better radio transmitter in the world today than those supplied by Nautel. For information, contact Nautel in Canada at +1-902-823-5131 or visit www.nautel.com.
◗USERREPORT BY STEVE MAIN Technical Specialist BAI Communications
BRISBANE, Queensland — Broad-
cast Australia, now known as BAI Communications, has a long history with Nautel transmitters, both at the sites we manage and at other locations where we act as contract engineers. We recently completed an NX10 installation at 4KQ/4BH AM in Brisbane, Queensland, owned by Australian Radio Network. This site may be one of the only transmission facilities in the world with four generations of Nautel transmitters under the same roof, representing more than 30 years of technology advances. Products include an AMPFET 10, installed in 1985; an ND5 installed in 2003, an XR12 in 2006 and now the NX10, which we installed in 2019. The AMPFET 10 and ND5 are standby/backup units, but are placed on the air periodically (I believe on a monthly basis). I have installed many Nautel transmitters over the years and have always found installation to be relatively easy compared to “other” brands. Nautel transmitters are packaged extremely well to endure any rough treatment that transport companies can dish out; I have never had a Nautel transmitter damaged in transit.
A great range for outside broadcast audio
The startup procedure that Nautel provides in their excellent manuals is easily followed. Once unpacked and installed, the startup procedure that Nautel provides in their excellent manuals is easily followed — and the transmitters work right out of the box, easily meeting the specifications that we have to comply with, so commissioning is a breeze. This was certainly the case with the NX10 at 4KQ/4BH. Nautel has been very good about working with us on our special requests. One interesting Nautel installation that we performed at another site was the relocation of two blue AMPFET transmitters (main/standby) from one site to another, where they were integrated as a parallel pair into a triple coupled site. Nautel supplied the combiner, which was from the XL Series, along with a retrofit kit to interface the AMPFET units to the combiner. After setting up, the transmitters operated perfectly and this combination is still in operation along with a pair of XR (main/standby)
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