PAS Sound have recently completed the installation of a public address system to a new maintenance hangar for Monarch Aircraft Engineering.

The new 110,000 sq ft state-of-the-art facility at Birmingham will complement the company's existing engineering operations at London Gatwick, London Luton and Manchester Airports and supports the continuing growth of MAELs high quality aircraft engineering activities. The new facility can accommodate almost every aircraft type in its two bays, incorporates industry-leading design and build standards, and is one of the first to have the capacity for Boeing 787 Dreamliner maintenance, with sufficient capacity for other wide body aircraft, such as the Boeing 777, 747 and Airbus A350. It is large enough to accommodate two Boeing 777-300ER aircraft or 10 narrow-body aircraft and will contain a number of component-repair and back shops. The vast building, covering c2.5 acres is big enough to house four full size football pitches, 2400 Minis or 450 double decker buses.

PAS engineers installed the system over the course of a single week, working in teams to fulfil the limited fit out window available between the building being completed and commencing its maintenance operations.

The system was carefully developed to cover the vast building with distributed sound via a network of high quality, performance speakers located around the site to enable staff messages to be broadcast from six microphone positions. A digital audio router was employed to route the signals from microphones to the various areas of the building, allowing sophisticated tonal adjustment to be made to compensate for the very lively acoustics in the large hangar space.

After setup was completed the system performs well and is a useful communication tool for staff within this superb engineering facility.