National Talking Newspapers and Magazines

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Good Practice for Talking Newspapers

Introduction
1. Management
2. Infrastructure
3. Editorial
4. Presentation
5. Reading
6. Recording
7. Copying
8. Packing and Posting
9. Returns
10. Reactions
11. Repairs
12. Health, Safety and Electricity
13. Public Relations
14. Finance
15. Development

7. Copying

This operation demands the most consistent and careful routines. It is just so repetitive for the operators that a moment's lapse of concentration, such as one unpressed button or one unchecked batch of cassettes, could mean a dozen individual listeners receiving blank cassettes in their wallets. See photographs 3.

Equipment
There are a handful of manufacturers offering units which makes individual evaluation worthwhile when replacements are due. Properly used and maintained, all makes will give excellent results with suitable cassettes.

Environment
When a few hundred copies are made on a chain of around 14 slaves there will be degree or two of heat generated and a lot of air sucked through the units. It follows that ventilation and as dust free a copying area as possible are essential to maintain the health of the operators and the internal cleanliness of the machines.

The dustiest TN job must be emptying out the Post Office's mailbags which spend their life being dragged around the floors of sorting offices and on and off delivery vans. It is well worth keeping the copiers in a different room to the mailing returns or not carrying out both operations at the same time.

Mechanical ventilation over the copier bench is desirable but beware that there is no back draft when the fan is not running which could bring in the dreaded dust.

Most TNs find that copying is a standing operation and the units are best on a worktop of around 3 feet, (900mm), with other tables or trolleys adjacent for pre-preparation and subsequent checking of cassettes.

Cleanliness
Dirt is death to cassettes and to good recordings. Whenever cassettes are out of their cases they are vulnerable and the ever-open slots on copiers are an invitation for dirt to drop in and gum up the works. Vigilance is the only weapon against this problem. In addition, a look-out should be kept for pieces of plastic from cassettes getting into the works and stopping slave positions from working properly.

Heads
Dirt also arrives in the form of particles of oxide shed from the tape. These particles get picked-up on the heads and pinchwheels. A build-up of oxide on the heads prevents the making of a good recording, while on pinchwheels, it can introduce speed variations and in some cases can cause tape jams.

Before starting, and regularly through the session, cotton cleaning buds with a drop of cleaning fluid must be applied to the heads and pinch wheel assembly in the master and every slave position. Additional ad hoc cleaning during the session may be necessary if monitoring of the recorded cassettes reveals poor performance from a slave position. The quality of the tape used nowadays is far less prone to oxide shedding than some 10-15 years ago, so things are getting easier for TN producers.

Aids
Little boxes which hold about 20 cassettes (without the cases) will assist in loading and unloading.

Numbered or coloured markers will help the laying out of copies for monitoring. The degree of checking will depend on experience with machines and cassettes.

Monitoring
Even new machines and new cassettes will not prevent occasional faulty copies. The routine must give a reasonable chance of catching faulty copies before they go out and disappoint listeners.

Ideally every cassette should be played but unless the TN is producing a very low number of copies this is impractical and un-necessary. It is important to know from which slave position a particular copy has come and this can be achieved by laying out the copies from each run in the same order as the machine positions. Systematic checking of each run by playing a snatch from side one and turning over to check the end of side two should reveal problems with a particular position. When this occurs the previous (unchecked) cassettes from that position can be played to determine if it is a 'one-off' or if that slave went down earlier in the session.

Rewinds
The most frustrating chore in any copying run is the rewinding of cassettes back to the beginning. Nagging of listeners occasionally may help to reduce this problem, although checking that cassettes are rewound to the start of side one could be part of the returns procedure, so that when the tapes are ready for copying, all are back to the start.

Another frustration comes from the time taken for the copiers to rewind after a copying run when they could be producing more copies. If a proper rewinding machine is not affordable it is worth having one or two ordinary cassette machines in the room so that as the master position is rewinding the copies from the slaves are taken off and put to one side for rewinding on the ordinary machines.

Reloading the copiers can take place during the remainder of the master position rewinding and the cycle is ready to go again as soon as the master is fully rewound.

Tape life
Cassettes do not last forever! Cassette shells get damaged and the tape can get stretched and crinkled. During the copying process is a good time to check cassettes. When loading the copiers, volunteers should look out for cassettes with sections of shell loose or missing, particularly around the capstan hole and over the pressure pad area, - any badly damaged cassettes should be discarded.

During the quality check, any cassette that produces poor sound should be inspected to see if the tape has been damaged - if so throw it away.

If your TN wishes to keep a record of how many times a cassette has been sent out, one method is to have a label on the cassette which has three rows of '0's type on it. (These can be produced using a word processor). When the tape is sent out, strike through an '0', then when all the '0's have been crossed out, the cassette can be removed from circulation.

Numbers
Once the system and the team are in full swing, it can be difficult to know when to stop. If the despatch team record a note of the number packed for the previous issue in the Daybook it will be easy for the copying team to check the likely numbers for the current issue.

Counting of cassettes is easy if plastic containers or crates are marked with the number contained up to a mark. Alternatively, a unit wide enough to take (say) six stacks of cassettes, about three-quarters of a cassette deep and of a height to take 50 cassettes will store 300 cassettes without any problems. The individual stacks of cassettes are separated by dowelling rods running the height of the unit. Fixing the unit on the wall above the copiers gives easy access for operators.

Alternatively, if the wallets are ready for posting, then the copying team only need to keep producing cassettes until all the wallets have been filled! A small number of spare tapes should be kept for sending out to any listener who reports a faulty copy although if the checking process has been done correctly, there should be no faulty copies.

Tidying up
At the end of the run, the master should be filed in a specific place and the cleaning operation carried out before replacing the dust covers. Only the copying team will know when the TN needs more cassettes, so decide the safe number of reserves which should be in hand and monitor this after each session. Christmas and New Year together with bad weather can slow down the rate of listeners' returns quite a lot.

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