Practice voice: your browser's speech synthesis. Replace with classroom recordings later (see notes below).
How the exercise works
- Choose a level. Clear channel has no noise. Busy venue adds crowd-level static and a slightly faster voice. Control room challenge is noisier and faster still, with more detail packed into each request. Noise and volume sliders are yours to change at any time.
- Play the transmission. Nothing plays automatically. Each message is three phrases: who is calling, where they are, what they need.
- Answer three questions. Call sign, location and request. If a phrase was never transmitted, the only correct answer is "Say again". Picking a plausible location that was never said scores as wrong, because on a real radio that is how someone ends up at the wrong door.
- Check and replay. The feedback shows what you heard correctly and what you missed. If you got the location wrong you can replay just the location phrase, then the whole message.
- Finish the level. After four transmissions you get a breakdown by skill: call signs, locations, requests and asking for a repeat.
Tick Text practice for a no-audio version with the same questions and transcripts, which also works with a screen reader.
Replacing the practice voice with real recordings
The transmissions are stored as separate phrases so each can be replayed on its own. The page uses your browser's speech synthesis, labelled as a practice voice. To use classroom recordings instead, record each phrase as an MP3 named <transmission id>-<phrase>.mp3, for example l1-01-cs.mp3, l1-01-loc.mp3, l1-01-req.mp3, place them in /assets/tools/radio/, and set USE_FILES to true at the top of the page script. Any phrase without a file falls back to the practice voice.
Radio basics the exercise reinforces
- Call sign first. "Control, Control, this is Sierra Two" tells the room who is talking before anything else.
- Location, then request. Where you are, then what you need. The listener can start moving before you have finished.
- Spell anything unusual with the phonetic alphabet: names, registrations, postcodes.
- If you did not get it, say so. "Say again" is procedure, not weakness. Guessing is the failure.
- Keep it short. Hold the transmit button for a beat before you speak, speak across the microphone, release when you say "over".
The searching and communications practical on the Door Supervisor course assesses exactly this; see Practical 2: search and communications.
FAQ
What does "say again" mean on a radio?
It asks the sender to repeat part or all of a message: "say again location" asks only for the location. Operators use it instead of "repeat", which has a different meaning in military use.
What should a security radio message contain?
Who you are calling, who you are, where you are and what you need, ending with "over". Keep it factual and short; details like descriptions follow once the listener is ready.
Does this tool record my voice?
No. It only plays audio; your microphone is never used and nothing is sent anywhere.