with the help of

From Time Team site to internet site

Without the luxury of land telephone lines in the field where the Time Team is digging, creating and maintaining this website is an historical event in itself! Our HQ is the Time Team incident room where the television production crew will be putting together all the results from the excavation. 'Incident room' may sound grand, but it's actually an 18th-century barn in an adjoining meadow. When we arrived on Friday afternoon to set up, the owner was still removing bales of hay, and we had to shoo away a couple of pigeons that were nesting in the rafters.

The main problem facing us was how to upload all the information on to the Channel 4 server. Luckily, Cellnet came to the rescue. We're using their new QuickConnect ISDN service to send the data. They've also lent us a Compaq laptop fitted with an Apollo LAN connector from Brand Communications, as well as a Nokia mobile phone. This connection gives us a superfast link straight on to ISDN. The result? The otherwise puny 9600 transfer rate from the phone has been transformed into a very respectable digital line. With a holster made from the production team's gaffer tape, we've fixed the Nokia in a position where we get best coverage - essential for transmitting large amounts of data.

The website team consists of four dedicated individuals. Sue Davis is the site builder and graphics wizard. She liaises with the Time Team graphics crew to get their visuals to put up on the site, gets photos from Simon and text from Nancy.

Simon is our site photographer. His job is to get the best pictures from around the dig. We're using a digital camera to get those images, which are then downloaded to another laptop.

Nancy is our journalist. She's the one with her finger in all of the pies, so that when something occurs on site, she's there with the story. As the weekend progresses, she'll track down the Time Team - Tony Robinson, Mick and the rest of the archaeologists and other experts, and of course, the dedicated crew – to get the lowdown on how the dig is going.

Finally, there's Jonathan, logistics and chief technician. His contingency plan for when the phone lines go down is to go to the pub and upload all the stuff from there while testing out the local beer. He hopes it won't come to that!