COPYING

Like the despatching, copying takes place on each Wednesday morning at the studio. Unlike the despatchers, the copiers have the luxury of a bit of a lie-in as their work can only commence once the despatchers have completed most of theirs.

The copier has 3 main tasks to accomplish.

The first is to erase the previous recordings from all the returned memory sticks. This would be quite a tedious task if each stick had to be processed individually, but fortunately, we have a special piece of equipment to speed things up. This is a cloning machine – that’s not its real name but it does make it sound like we’re doing top secret work for the government!

The mysterious machine resembles a desktop PC, except on its front are 21 USB ports, one of which is the master slot. The process is simple: put the memory sticks in the slots (20 at a time) and select the erase function. Each batch only takes a minute or two but will need to be repeated 4 or 5 times to provide the required number of sticks.

Now we’re ready for stage 2. The memory stick containing the master of the previous evening’s recording is placed in its particular slot, followed by the ordinary sticks in the other USB ports. The copy function is then selected. Copying takes longer than erasing but is still only a few minutes for each run.

Once the required number of copies have been reached, each memory stick is placed in its own wallet, the wallets put in a large sack (luckily it’s not too heavy) and the sack taken over to Heathcoats for posting.

Job Done!