Bengalla Mining Company Implements TaitNet QS² Simulcast

The Customer:

Rio Tinto Coal Australia manages the Bengalla Mining Company on behalf of Coal and Allied and other joint venture partners.  Situated in the Upper Hunter Valley, NSW, adjacent to Muswellbrook, the mine has operated since 1998.

The Challenge:

Bengalla Mining Company required an upgrade of their single site, two channel VHF high band conventional system.  The previous system created a number of frustrations for the mine’s growing operations, the most prominent being communication black spots.  For an open pit operation, the landscape is continually changing with spoil dumps created from the mining overburden.  These spoil dumps interfere with the radio transmission and create radio black spots in the coverage area. 

When large earth moving equipment is required to work in these black spot areas, significant health and safety concerns are raised.

Blasting is an important part of Bengalla’s operation. For the new system to be a success the mine required the capability to notify everyone on the network of any blasting activities.  However this capability also had to allow those operating on the network the ability to talk over the blast tone should the need arise. 

Operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week it was important that the transition between the new and old radio systems be as seamless as possible, to ensure production downtime was minimised.   The complete changeover from the old system to the new took less than 10 minutes, and was seamless to users, apart from significantly improved coverage in the black spot areas.

The Solution:

Tait and Tait dealer General Communications (GenCom) provided Bengalla Mining Company with a cost effective, flexible upgrade.  The new VHF system is comprised of two sites and four channels, three conventional channels and one TaitNet QS² Simulcast channel. 

To remove the mine’s radio black spots simply installing another conventional channel to provide a larger coverage area was not going to meet the mine’s needs.  For those operating heavy machinery, concentration is paramount and having to continually change channels between sites is a distraction that operators do not need.  If a radio user were to forget to change channels the problems from theprevious system would reoccur.  To overcome this, a Tait QS² Simulcast channel was installed.

Dedicated to production, those talking on the QS² channel can go anywhere in the coverage area without having to change channels in-between the two sites. 

Other options such as base voting can provide a similar solution, however base voting was not a wise choice for Bengalla, as it would require significant expenditure to upgrade the Mine’s radios to base voting units.

The efficient QS² installation process was another advantage for Bengalla’s situation.  To install a base voting system, all mobile and portable units using the network must be reprogrammed to work on the system and operate on the same channel.  For most organisations this isn’t a problem as the radio’s can be reprogrammed when the day finishes and have no impact on their work. Operating 24 hours a day, Bengalla didn’t have this luxury.  Stopping production to reprogram their 100 plus radios was something the mine wanted to avoid.  QS² has the unique ability to reuse a single frequency pair at multiple sites, meaning the new QS² channel could be installed seamlessly without any radio reprogramming required, minimising any downtime installing the new system may have caused.

Tait dealer GenCom developed a blast tone generator to address Bengalla’s blasting notification requirement.  The blast tone generator links into the network’s audio bridge which then sends a transmission to all four channels.  Approximately ten minutes prior to any blasting the blast tone generator sends a transmission notifying all radio users of the pending blast; this tone is maintained until the blasting has been completed.

The Outcome:

Bengalla’s new radio system now ensures communications throughout the mine are heard loud and clear no matter what the location, made possible with TaitNet QS² Simulcast.