In the comments to this post Steve asks:

Is there any reason why Radio Birmingham/WM at Pebble Mill had a completely different naming convention, with names like "Area 2"?

Well, I've no idea at all - this is new to me.

What about you, can you answer Steve's question?

Training Manual - Pull out: drawing of the desk

Training Manual - Appendix 1

Now you can check whether or not your station has (or had) the Point 13 Mod.

Training Manual - Page 18

Training Manual - Part 3: Glossary

The Neve Mark 3 Desk

Most of the Mark 3 Local Radio Desks were made in house by the BBC, but some were made by Neve.

This picture shows Dave Bussey at the faders of the Neve Mark 3 at BBC Radio Lincolnshire. Apart from all the bits being squashed closely together it looks largely similar to the layout from the BBC design. Moving the cart machines out of the frame of the desk has obviously helped to narrow it down a bit.

I always thought the space around the controls was one of the things that made the desk so user-friendly, especially for self-op work, so I wonder what this was like to operate?

Training Manual - Page 16

Training Manual - Page 15

Of all the phone-in systems I've come across, the telecaster is my least favourite.

Training Manual - Page 14

Going Underground

Here's one that got away. This picture is of a Mark 3 Desk in the Hack Green Secret Nuclear Bunker. The bunker is in Cheshire, but I believe the desk in one from BBC Shropshire. We've already seen a desk from Shropshire on the blog, and although they are very similar I don't think it's the same one.

I'm pretty sure that no Mark 3's were ever installed in cold war bunkers; they're too bulky, complex from an engineering point of view, and don't work without some of the gubbins usually hidden away in the apps room. This Wikipedia article has more information about the BBC's plans for a Wartime Broadcasting Service.

Training Manual - Page 13

Training Manual - Part Two: Using The Desk (and an entry about the Point 13 Mod that's much too long)

The Point Thirteen Modification was a thing of beauty.

Back in the day, before that new fangled ISDN came on the scene, your BBC Local would lease high quality "music lines" from BT to connect it with the local football grounds and any district studios or radio car receivers. These lines were one way, allowing contributions from the OB, but with no return feed from the studio. So you also leased a control line, a two-way circuit with much lower bandwidth which also allowed you to ring down the line to get the attention of whoever was at the other end. It was considered polite to always try talkback down the control line before ringing - you didn't want to ring in someone's ears.

So, on your Point 13 modded desk the music line would appear as an OS numbered between 1 and 12 which you would select on the top ring of the OS selector. This gave you the incoming circuit on a fader, but no comms. To get the control line associated with that source you'd also dial up point 13 on the bottom selector. Now you could send cue to the OB (no need for CF because there were no pesky digital delays to worry about) and chat away on the talkback as needed.

But some sources didn't have control lines, such as NCA studios at other BBC Locals, or GNS two-ways from London. For these you needed to ring a phone in the contributing studio. If you diverted that call to the desk you could select the TBU on your bottom OS selector and use that as a temporary control line.

And that was the brilliance of the Point 13 Mod.

Building in BNCS

BBC Swindon
Originally uploaded by Toby Hilder

BNCS is the BBC's Broadcast Network Control System. The touch screen interface allows you to route outside sources and other circuits around the bit of the Corporation near you. It's a bit more up to date than the Mark 3 Desk.

But that hasn't stopped local radio engineers from trying to integrate it neatly into their studios, as Toby Hilder's photo of BBC Wiltshire shows. The Mk III OS panel has been removed and a neatly fitting LCD has been put in the gap to allow control of BNCS. Very neat.

[UPDATE] Toby has sent me a bit more information about this picture. The cubicle as seen is rigged for Radio 1's Big Weekend, and the large LCD on top of the deask (above the PPMs) is for the VCS Cartplayer system.

Training Manual - Page 11

(71)Cubicle-to-Cubicle Headphone Talkback Key: This key gets you on to the presenter's headphones in the other cubicle. So look before you talk. He/she might be in the middle of a complicated bit of presentation.

Go on, I know you really want to.

That Mark 3 on eBay I blogged about the other week didn't sell.

It's been relisted for £750 (£100 cheaper than last time, and now there's the option to make an offer).

I still think it's a bit dear.

Training Manual - Page 10

Some stations have abandoned the two table format to gain space. Check with your engineers.

Or raise your head far enough to look through the glass in front of you. Now count the tables.

Upside-Down Faders

BBC Essex (Check Out The Upside-Down Faders!!)
Originally uploaded by Toby Hilder

Toby Hilder's pic of the cubicle at BBC Essex makes the Mark 3 desk look tiny with all of those monitors nestled around it.

When the BBC moved away from rotary faders to linear ones they designed them to open towards the operator, whereas the rest of the world opened faders away from you. I used to dogmatically believe the BBC way was right and proper and that everyone else had got it wrong. Now it really doesn't bother me which way a fader opens (although secretly I do still know that one is wrong).

In his description to the photo Toby suggests that the BBC designed faders this way so that Studio Managers wouldn't get their ties caught in them, which is by far the most beautiful idea for this that I've heard. Elsewhere I've heard it was to make it harder to accidentally fire off remote started equipment by nudging a fader off it's stop. This is another good idea, but when you remember that most desks at the time were built with two person operation in mind (one SM to do the mix at the panel and another to play the tapes and discs) this seems less likely. I've also heard people suggest that if you want something you pull it towards you, so if I want my mic on I'll instinctively want to pull the fader open.

I don't believe any of these stories. I think the BBC built desks this way because at the network centres the faders aren't opened all the way. The Normal Stop, where pre-fade level matches what you get out of the opened fader, isn't at 30 on the escutcheon plate, but at 23. To accurately open a fader to a setting like this is much harder when you're pushing away, but pulling the fader open needs just a quick glance down to get you there every time.

If you think I'm wrong, or you've another idea for why the BBC built it's desks "upside-down" then let off your steam in the comments.

Training Manual - Page 9

N. B. If you close your microphone fader hard, it may bounce off the back-stop and cut your loudspeakers. This can be disconcerting but it happens.

BBC Radio Cleveland

Stan Laundon's photo is of a Mark 3 Desk at BBC Radio Cleveland. Stan thinks it's from 1983 or 84, around the time when the station moved into a new home in the centre of Middlesbrough and changed it's name from BBC Radio Teesside (now, of course it's BBC Tees).

Note the Spotmaster triple stacked cart machine (with no record capability so there's an extra recording machine to the right just in front of the carousel) and the tape machines dropped into the wing of the desk, which must have editing uncomfortable.

Like BBC Radio Lancashire the station had previously been equipped with the Mark 2 Desk, as documented on Roger Beckwith's great Old BBC Radio Broadcasting Equipment and Memories site.

Thanks to Stan for allowing me to use his photo.

Water, water, everwhere.

Did you ever spill a drink on a desk? I'm always surprised when the top of a desk is left nice and flat, as they make very expensive tea trays.

One Saturday evening a colleague knocked a full pint of water over the panel at the right hand end of the desk in 1A where the various talkback keys were. A lot of the water simply poured straight through to form a nice puddle under the desk, but it was really soaked. It was close to the end of the broadcast day, so we switched the cubicle off at the isolator on the wall and moved into 1B. We left a bucket underneath the desk to catch and drips, and a note for the morning teams.

That night was the staff Christmas do, where we'd see the engineer in an hour or so. We finished off the programme, got tidied up for our night out and left the desk to dry out. At the party we told the engineer what we'd done. By Monday it had all dried out and everything worked as well as always.

It was a close call, and a lucky escape. It was a good job he wasn't drinking Coke.

Training Manual - Page 8

If the cart doesn't start, check:

1. Cart is fully pushed into slot; that it's the right way round, and that the associated red light is on.


2. Source is switched to Source 1.


3. You've opened the right fader!

More good advice from the manual, not afraid to make you check the basics.

The Mark 3 Desk Blog Needs You!

The Mark 3 Desk Blog needs your help. Well, your photos, memories and Mk III stories really.

I'm especially interested in the wierd and wonderful. Did you drive the mono prototype at Radio Cumbria that had the OS and Tape Repro sections swapped round? Have you pictures of the version of the desk made by Neve? Did you get your hands on the music version of the desk? Did your engineer (or were you that engineer) come up with a clever mod to tackle a local problem?

If you've got stories to tell, peculiar local practices, notes, diagrams or artifacts you'd like to share then please leave a brief comment and I'll get back in touch to discuss how we can share them on the blog.

After all, the Mark 3 was designed for self-op but sometimes you need a second pair of hands.

Training Manual - Page 7

(52) Recording Selectors: One for each machine. Using these you can record, directly onto individual machines, the desk output or eleven other different sources... Point 12 selects Tape 1 replay so that a tape may be copied from machine 1 on to any other.

Upgrading from Mk II technology where everything had to be plugged up in the Ops Room this was really amazing. It also caught a lot of people out, how many of us recorded 10 minutes of Radio 4 instead of that un-repeatable GNS interview? Only me then?

Training Manual - Page 6

There is a list of what's on your Ring Main stuck somewhere on the desk.

I love the optimism of that note. There is a list. We're not sure where it will be, or how accurate it'll be. But it's there somewhere.

Push the button

Switching on Darwen Street
Originally uploaded by westy48

It's a warm Sunday evening in 1988. The engineers have finished their work, and Monday morning's breakfast show is due to be the first programme from BBC Radio Lancashire's new home on Darwen Street.

The BT engineers have switched the lines over and everything is ready. The Motorway Show, which Paul O'Gorman had been presenting on weekend evenings during expansion work on the M6 had been postponed for the week to allow the changeover work to go ahead. But Paul got a call to come in and do the show as normal, but from the new studios. It was a chance to make sure it all worked before breakfast.

The (lousy, sorry) photo shows the Mk 3 desk at Radio Lancs taking control for the very first time. North West Tonight came the following day for the official switch on, and made this report.

Paul is still at the station and has presented and produced most of the programmes there in the intervening years.

Training Manual - Page 5

(36) Mic Limiter Meter: Shows how hard you're being limited or stopped from peaking over 6 on the PPM when you talk loudly or shout. Do not rely on the limiter to get your voice level right. You must prefade your mic correctly and only use the limiter to catch sudden peaks from you or your guests voice. This meter should not usually peak very high, otherwise limiting is too harsh, and will affect the quality of sound.

That's good advice. There are some people I've worked with who took a more flexible approach to the use of the limiter, but you couldn't use it as a compressor no matter how hard you tried.

The Mythical Music Mark 3

There were rumours that some stations had a different Mark 3. Adjacent to large "Community Studios" where concerts and audience shows could be held it was said that some stations had a special Mk III modified to cater for the needs of live music performance, or providing PA to an audience.

BBC Radio Merseyside had one in their building on Paradise Street.

Dave Adey in Studio 2 Paradise Street.
Originally uploaded by mersey_dub

The desk, already quite a stretch for some to segue from a gram to a cart, was lengthened. The four outside source channels and the RBS were replaced by twelve mic channels that were fed from pattresses on the studio wall.

From what I remember the channels had a course gain control, some sort of EQ, and the facility to provide auxiliary sends, although these weren't labelled as auxes and no-one really seemed to properly know how it worked.

To get it all to fit into the frame the narrow divide between the normal Mark 3 mic channels and the tape repros was removed. This was only a small change, but it made everything feel cramped at the right hand side of the desk. You realised that one of the things that made the Mark 3 design so good for self-op work was the space; by not packing in too much stuff there was room for your hands to work the desk, even when thinking about what you were meant to be saying.

Training Manual - Page 4

Direct to Transmitter Panel: BEWARE AND CARE!

The red buttons would sometimes get stuck, which was scary when trying to relinquish control. But only until you remembered the silver button at the far left would release all of the red buttons.

Versatility

BBC Radio Shropshire studio
Originally uploaded by
Jim Hawkins In The Morning

The Mk III desk is a classic bit of 70s design work. It's rugged, reliable, elegant, user-friendly and surprisingly future-proof. Built in a time when a triple-stack cart player was state of the art broadcast technology the Mark 3 has been adapted by station engineers to cope with the arrival of CD players, mini-disks, ISDN, PC based playout and touch-screen OS selection.

Jim's photo shows the Mark 3 at BBC Radio Shropshire happily accommodating Radioman and the screen on the left displays incoming SMS messages from the listener.

Ironically BBC Radio Shropshire has had a significant technical upgrade since this was taken and now has the rather spiffy Calrec desks used elsewhere in BBC Local Radio.

(As a complete diversion from the point of this post, Jim is well connected with his audience. Apart from the Flickr stream he's @jiminthemorning on Twitter and his biog page on the BBC Shropshire site includes a mobile number that listeners can use to call or text Jim.)

Training Manual - Page 3

(20) Limiter Over-Modulation Lamps: Marked MIC, MF, VHF.

Contrary to popular belief it wasn't necessary to have all three of these constantly illuminated if you wanted your programmes to reach the transmitter.

Training Manual - Page 2

(12) Source Engaged Lamp: Lights up to show another OS knob (10) has already engaged the number you've selected. This might be an OS knob in another cubicle. Switch off. Do not send cue or clean feed.

This light was good because it stopped you making a mess of someone else's programme. And when it came on you usually did call the colleague who'd engaged the source elsewhere an OS knob, and occasionally something stronger.

It was almost like being at college.

Cubicle 2 at BBC Radio Lancashire

I'd forgotten how beige it was.

At Darwen Street I began to learn my craft. I'd picked up the mechanics at King Street, and had coped with Saturday Sport and Children in Need. But at Darwen Street in these new studios I began to learn how to do it better, how to communicate as part of a team. I discovered that just because you could peak six all of the time, you probably shouldn't. I worked with Joe Wilson who would relentlessly churn out ideas. He always had something new on the go, and always had something that could occupy a few freelance hours. Somehow he also found some budget to pay for those hours.

But what I was learning was worth far more than £4/hour. The person I learnt most from was Gerald Jackson. Gerald has mentored more people into our industry than just about anyone else. I bet there's someone who's been helped by Gerald, or helped by someone who was helped by Gerald in every BBC local radio station. You could follow him round all day picking up new bits of information, learning new skills. Gerald has an incredible depth of knowledge, and can not only tell how to do something, but why you should do it that way. The last time I met Gerald was two years ago, and I still found myself learning from him.

The staff members in BBC local radio at the time clearly felt no threat from eager freelancers, and were willing to pass on all they knew. In fact it seemed like they felt it was their duty. For the likes of myself, Paul, Alec, Gary and the others who passed through it was almost like being at college.

Mk III in the wild.

Pier studio session - 5
Originally uploaded by maxcady808

The Mark 3 desk is a BBC design and totally associated with BBC local radio. Or so I thought.

This one has escaped to the wild and now resides at Pier Productions in Brighton.

Training Manual - Part One: The Controls

A Mark 3 of your own

If you've got £850 burning a hole in your pocket and you just can't live without your own Mk III desk then have a look at this on eBay.

Oh - It looks like you'll need to be handy with a bit of carpentry and the sort of man (well, it will be a man who buys it...) who can whip up a fairly complex wiring loom in a trice.

(Thanks to Edmund Bruce for the hat tip).

Training Manual - Introduction

"The Mark 3 desk is a versatile 17 channel stereo mixer developed in the early 1970s. Primarily for self-op, it was the first local radio desk to be designed from ideas suggested by local radio production and operational staff, and is both reliable and easy to use."

Training Manual - Layouts

Note - some stations use a single talks table.

In the North West, Lancashire and Merseyside had the square layout and Manchester had the linear one.

Tilting the two cubicles in towards each other in the square layout was very clever. Acoustically it cut down on standing waves and made them less boxy.

But it also gave you better sight lines between the desks, so with a quick glance you could see more than just a profile of the person working next door. Very useful.

From King Street to Darwen Street

Cub 2 desk

Michael Chapman was the Station Manager at BBC Radio Lancashire, and his gift to the station was the new building on Darwen Street, right opposite the cathedral. This meant new kit, as the Mk II desk was long obsolete. So a team from Radio Training came up to show us how the new Mk III studios worked.

As a Mk II station there'd been a lot of need for technical support, and for freelance PAs like myself there was a nice little trade in shifts. The Mk III philosophy meant more self-opping and less work for the likes of me. A rota for the training was drawn up with presenters and staff getting hours of one-on-one support and the opportunity to do pilots in the new studios. There was nothing for the freelance brigade.

I was studying for my A levels at the time, and if I wasn't at college I was at the radio station, and so an opportunity arose to get some time with an instructor. It was an offer to have a couple of hours if I could get to the new building straight away. It was only about ten minutes walk, so off I went. I loved it.

At King Street the desks had been mono, but the new studios were stereo. All of the jingles and trailers from the old station were on mono carts, which had a track layout incompatible with the stereo cart machines we had at Darwen Street. Someone had to re-cart the entire jingle package - once for each of the three cubicles - guess who got to do a lot of that? Carting stuff up was actually pretty dull, but it meant I got to occupy one of the new cubicles for hours at a stretch; and be seen by the team doing something useful. And doing it well - no wowed starts and no 8 second jingles on 70 seconds carts.

Training Manual - Cover

The Beginning

For me, the beginning isn't the BBC Mark III, it's the rotary fadered predecessor of everyone's favourite desk, the Mk II.

It was the mid 1980s, and on the advice of the Careers Officer I'd written to the Lancashire Evening Telegraph, published 6 days a week in Blackburn. My letter asked the paper for work experience; you know the sort of thing, could I go in and find out about being a journalist. The Telegraph didn't reply, so I wrote to BBC Radio Lancashire, and it wasn't that long before I was invited in to meet Dave Sanders who produced and presented "Sanders on Saturday" a four hour dash around events happening across the county every Saturday.

Dave agreed to let me come in the next Saturday to make brews, run errands and be a bit of a dogsbody. I was shown how to find something in the gram library, which had a sort-of-working catalogue system and then was taken through to the Ops Room.

Walking through that door changed my life.

Ops Room

I was struck by how wonderful it was that the person operating the controls was changing what came out of the radio. This was amazing stuff. Cigarette smoke hung in the air, overflowing ashtrays balanced on top of tape machines and disembodied voices crackled out of speakers. It all looked impossibly complicated.

Over the course of a year or so I was fortunate to be shown the ropes by Dave and Chris Yates, the Programme Assistant who presented Saturday breakfast, tech-opped SoS and then drove the sport show. That must have been a busy shift. They were very generous with their knowledge and taught me the basic mechanics of desk driving and the jackfield.

There were four full height bays. You couldn't do anything fancy on a MkII station without throwing a yard or two of double enders at the wall. If you wanted to record anything apart from desk output you got out of the chair and plugged it up. Split transmission? OK, but plug it up yourself. Carefully.

That was the beginning for me. A grasp of the basics of radio ops, an understanding of how things should be done. I learnt the skills, and importantly the culture, of BBC local radio.

It was BBC local radio in mono, but that would soon change.