Tour of Britain

Communication Specialists provide two way radio for the Tour of Britain

The Tour of Britain is a blue riband cycling event that returned to the British cycling calendar in 2004 after an absence of five years. Cycling is a hugely popular sport and British cyclists are among the best in the world, winning five gold medals in the 2004 Olympics and Paralympics.

The Tour of Britain has formerly been known as the Milk Race, the Kellogg's Tour and the Pru Tour of Britain. The aspiration of the Tour of Britain was to re-launch the event along the lines of the Tour de France, which has no title sponsor but a spectrum of public and private sector support.

The Tour of Britain has placed itself on a global platform alongside major races such as The Tour de France and Giro d'Italia by attracting a combination of national and international teams. Teams which are attracted to racing the Tour of Britain include Pro Tour Teams such as T-Mobile, Quickstep, Phonak and CSC.

The world governing body the UCI (the Union Cyclisme Internationale) granted the 2004Tour of Britain world championship ranking status. The Tour of Britain is determined in the future to become part of the UCI's elite Pro Tour calendar.

The Tour of Britain has four founding directors: Chief Executive, Hugh Roberts who also heads sporting marketing and events company Sweetspot Tony Doyle MBE, twice world pursuit champion Mick Bennett, double Olympic medallist Peter Moore OBE, former Managing Director of Center Parc.

The Tour of Britain is a not for profit organisation governed by a Board of Trustees with representatives from the sport of cycling, trade and industry and politics.

Communication Specialists are sponsors of the Tour of Britain and installed their radio equipment, their engineers Slawosz Uznanski, Raymoond Brooks and Maciej Korneluk were there that day to help install the required equipment on Thursday 6 September 2007.

For the Tour of Britain Communication Specialists supplied the following equipment:

• 60 + 6 car/mobile Motorola GM900 and CM140 radio units complete with fist mics, power leads and UHF 3dB collinear mag mounting antennas, installed in over 20 brand new 2007
• Vauxhall Astra and Vectra cars
• 4 mobile units GM950 for motorcycles with autocom headset systems
• 80 + 30 hand portable Motorola radios with spare batteries and chargers

All systems work with 2 independent repeaters, located in the organisers cars, one in front of the cyclists group other one in the middle, to provide maximum coverage for all radio users.

All equipment was prepared in our workshop (programming, testing, charging batteries) one week before installation. Installation of car/mobile units was made on Thursday 6 September and Friday 7 September (motorcycles on Saturday). Giving out all hand portable radio equipment to the users was made on Saturday and Sunday.

Instructions on how to operate channels was given to all users.

So far all equipment and system works well. Comm-spec Team (Kervin Labrosse, Raymond Brooks and Slawosz Uznanski) is following the race in Tour Of Britain as a technical support for two way radio equipment and all communication system.

Stage 1: Reading to Southampton - Monday 10 September
Stage 2: Yeovilton to Taunton - Tuesday 11 September
Stage 3: Worcester to Wolverhampton - Wednesday 12 September
Stage 4: Rother Valley Country Park to Bradford - Thursday 13 September
Stage 5: Liverpool to Kendall - Friday 14 September
Stage 6: Dumfries to Glasgow - Saturday 15 September