UK Broadcast Transmission
Main indexMain GalleryFeaturesInfoSend in your photos
Desktop wallpaperMailing listsFAQsContact
The LibraryTeletextMHPAstrohosts

CONTRIBUTORS

Your chance to put faces to names of some of the contributors to the TX Gallery and the tx-list. If you are a contributor to either and would like to be included on this page please drop me a line

Mike Brown

Mike was born in 1955 and has lived in the Herts / Beds area for most of his life although he has now moved to Cornwall. He started this site in 1995 and since then, with the help of other like-minded enthusists, things have gotten a bit out-of-hand!

Occupation: Sound engineer, hostmaster and postmaster
Camera: Fuji S5800 / Canon EOS500
Favourite music: Almost everything except opera and R&B!

Steve Caddy

Born in Stoke-on-Trent in the late 70s. Attended primary school in Chelmsford, grammar school in Grantham, and university in Aberystwyth. Entered the world of broadcasting in 1994 - hospital radio has never been the same since. I've been station engineer for a few restricted service licences. I've been a radio ham since 2003.

Location: Newark, Notts
Occupation: Software engineer, part time broadcast engineer
Camera: Advent MP8, Kodak EZ200
Transport: Renault Modus (1.2l petrol)
Favourite Music:
The Beautiful South
Web site link: http://www.boundarysound.co.uk

Rigging an antenna for an RSL last March. Planned it to take an hour, and actually took 5 hours in the freezing cold on top of a hill. Turned it on, to test it, and then discovered that we were unable to receive the UHF uplink.

Mark Carver

Born six months before BBC 2, stuck fingers in live light socket at the age of 3, the rest was fate really.

Location: North Hampshire (within the 70dBuV/m contour of Hannington)
Occupation: Broadcast Engineer (Baseband)
Camera: Olympus u300
Favouite music: Capital Radio Jingle Package 1974
Web site link: http://www.markyboy.net

Nigel and Anne Coote


Nigel J. Coote
Born in Newcastle Upon Tyne 1954.  Served 9 years in Royal Navy 1973 to 1982 (Weapons Engineering (Radio)); Welwyn Electric 1982 to 1983 Electronics Test Technician; Paisley College of Technology (MEDC) 1983 to 1988 Computer Technician; Strathclyde Regional Council 1988 to 1996 Audio Visual Technician; Renfrewshire Council 1996 to 1999 Audio Visual Technician; Renfrewshire Council 1999 to 2010 IT Technician.  Retired in March 2010. Married to Anne, 25 years.
Location: Paisley, Renfrewshire.
MB21 interest came about through seeing Pontop Pike and Burnhope masts whilst on cycling holiday in County Durham 2002 and later Emley Moor and Moel-y-Parc. In 2008 submitted my first photos of Fair Isle (Link Site) and the rest is history.
Transport Shanks Pony (walking), push bike (touring cycle), train, car (Vauxhall Corsa 1.4 SE).
Cameras: Canon EOS 350D, Canon EOS 400D


Anne Coote
Born in Greenock 1956, has been working in NHS since 1977 in various admin posts.
Location: Paisley, Renfrewshire.
Having accompanied Nigel since 2002 on days out and holidays, they always end up in a detour to photograph a mast. Most memorable was Fair Isle when the local birds dive bombed us as they thought we were a threat to their chicks (our cycle helmets acted as hard hats!!). Nigel and I celebrated our silver wedding in June 2011 in Iceland and sadly to say we were mast spotting during our 1100 mile drive but they were few and far between.
Camera: Canon EOS 450D

Marcus Jones

Interested in transmission in one form or another since building my own radio in my formative years. Have worked in the consumer AV service industry for the past 24 years, so have always had a need to know about how well the transmitter is operating, in order to advise customers about reception.

Location: Wrexham, North East Wales
Cameras: Minolta X700 35mm film / Panasonic DMC-FZ7 digital

Why take photos of transmitter masts? Because I find it amazing that
an inanimate metal object, often located in a remote area of the country, and operating (usually) unattended, can provide services that affect the lives of thousands (or millions) of people.

The work of the unsung heroes (riggers, planners, maintenance engineers) is never publically acknowledged. Hopefully the images published on this website go some way to rectifying this.

Jordy Lyons
Jordy Lyons

Born in Downpatrick, Northern Ireland, 1956, Jordy lived in Newcastle, NI for most of his life before moving to Belfast. Jordy worked as an operations director for a large multi-national company.

Jordy started taking pictures of masts due to an interest in climbing mountains and wondering what these things are. Some believe they're ugly, he saw a beauty and a purpose to these structures sitting in the middle of nowhere.

Sadly, Jordy died in 2008, but he made many useful and interesting contributions to this site which stand as a legacy to his enthusiasm and generosity.


Richard MooreRichard Moore

I was born in East Yorkshire in 1973, and lived my childhood within sight of High Hunsley. My interest in radio started when at the age of 13 my father bought me a radio mic that transmitted onto band II. Very quickly I discovered that by cutting some copper tube into the correct length half wave dipole the mic could actually transmit about half a mile. I went on to build a pirate radio station covering my village, and progressed through to presenting on hospital radio, RSLs, and the odd ILR swing shift.

Following graduation with a Degree in Marketing, I have worked in the commercial world, but love to get out and have a good 'anorak' at a tx or studio site. One of my first jobs was in European Sales for Digital Audio Research (now defunct), selling audio workstations into TV, radio and post which was fascinating and I got to see lots of great studio facilities.

I also enjoy computing and following a Masters Degree in IT & eBusiness have gone onto working in the IT security industry. At home I maintain my own network with load balanced 16Mb and 8Mb internet feeds protected by SmoothWall Advanced Firewall , Windows 2003 domain controller, Exchange Server, and IIS web server which hosts my personal site.

Location: Bramhall, Cheshire (10mi South of Manchester)
Occupation: Head of Sales, SmoothWall, Leeds
Camera: Nikon D-80 (10.4Mp)
Transport: BMW 320D
Favourite Music: Gretchen Peters, Diana Krall, female vocals
Web site link: http://www.the-moores.co.uk/

Photo taken by my ever patient wife at Icomb Hill in the Cotswolds

Phil Reynolds

Cameras: A manual-focus Pentax SLR, used for the early efforts at Nottingham, Waltham and Lichfield. An auto-focus Canon Eos series SLR, used for Chesterfield. A Ricoh digital compact, 2 megapixels, used for Durness. My best camera available now is the 2 megapixel one in my mobile phone - though I don't rule out getting something better at some stage in the future, that will have to do for any others I attempt.
Web site link: http://www.tinsleyviaduct.com/phil/

I live in London, although I lived in Nottingham when I started taking photos for your site.

Colin Simpkin

Location: Oldham, Greater Manchester
Occupation: Technical Manager at an ILR station
Camera: Nothing flash for me... Fuji FinePix E550 and Kodak EasyShare DX6350 point-and-shoot things.
Transport: X-reg Ford Fiesta 'Finesse' (Oh, the irony.)
Music: Sadly I'm still living in the 80s
Web site link: http://www.galaxymanchester.co.uk/

Born in 1977. Still alive. Worked in student radio from '95 to '99, worked in commercial radio ever since.

God-awful photo of me attached, at a club OB sometime in late 2003 or early 2004. I still have no idea why the bear ears were involved...

Gary Smith
Location: North Wales
Occupation: Data manager, sound tech.
Camera: Nikon D2x
Webby stuff: http://www.garysmith.org.uk

Why masts? Hmm. Long story which passes through mobile phones, geekery and whatnot. They're pretty spectacular, aren't they? They look like you should be able to push them and they'd fall over. But they don't. That's something in itself. They fascinate me - they're beautiful. Also, quite eery - driving through the pitch black countryside and seeing a row of AWLs in front of you is ace.
Mike Smith
Web site link: http://www.mds975.co.uk/
Martin Watkins

Exeter University Chem Hons 1977 - 1980
Coopers & Lybrand 1980 - 1982
BBC 1982 - 1989;
freelance sound engineer since
involved in organ manufacturing business

Location: Devon
Camera:
Fuji Finepix S5000

Martin is pictured here holding his one-eighth scale model of the Caradon Hill mast.

Bill Wright

I was born in 1949 and very soon became interested in TV aerials. They were quite rare so I would spot them as we drove along in the motorbike and sidecar. When I started school I would draw the letters 'H' and 'X' with masts attached, insisting to the teacher that this was correct. That's when I first formed the opinion that young women were intrinsically thick, an opinion that I have found no reason to revise in the following fifty years.

ITV came out when I was seven and I would go out with Dad and put the aerials together while he put the ladders up. For a while after that I had a fairly normal childhood but by the time I was 13 I was fixing aerials at every possible opportunity. BBC2 started and I got 1/- [one shilling = 5p] per aerial. I was the richest kid in the school so I was able to pass my exams by bribing the teachers.

As soon as I was seventeen I nicked Dad's van and his customers, allowing 'A' Level studies to take third place (after boozing). I failed my exams spectacularly so there was only one thing for it. I became a schoolteacher, the worst downward turn in my whole life. But then it took a very steep upward turn when I married Hil, the love of my life.

After a short while I decided that we needed to be middle class so I resigned from teaching and started up as a full time aerial rigger. Nothing interesting happened in my life after that -- just kids and stuff. I'm still here, trading as Wright's Aerials. These days I don't do much proper work though. I just 'swan around' according to my son Paul. Swanning around mostly involves looking after largish TV distribution systems, and basically cherry-picking the challenging jobs and making Paul do all the crap ones. I get to some fascinating places, and see human life in all its variety.

Location: South Yorkshire
Camera: A Fuji 6900, purchased in May 2002 for £700. I know I could have a much better camera nowadays for about £100 but I'm happy with it. I suppose I'll replace it when it finally breaks. Did I mention I'm a skinflint?
Music: Classical before 1900. British dance bands of the 1930s, Music Hall 1890-1930, 1920s and 30s popular music, Dylan, Stones, Beatles, traditional English hymns, Folk.
Humour: Monty Python, Fawlty Towers, Max Miller, Radio Active.
Transport: 18 year-old Volvo estate, 14 year old work van, 15 year-old motorhome, 58 year-old legs. All of these are totally knackered.
Pets: All dead. Peace reigns.
Web site link:
http://www.wrightsaerials.tv/

I photograph transmitters because it gives a sense of purpose to our roaming around the countryside. I'm proud to be a small part of the mighty edifice that is mb21

Bill is pictured here surveying his estate from the Emley Moor observation platform.

Phil England
Born in May 1975 in Ipswich, Phil now resides on the side of Kilvey Hill in Bonymaen, Swansea (and has a great view of the masts!) He has some health issues, but plods on, or at least tries to. He has done a few bits in the media including presenting on radio (including presenting shows on RSL station Wham Radio in Blaenafon, RSL station Oxford Local Radio in Oxford, a show on community station Bro Radio in Barry, helped to run and also presented on the community station Radio Tircoed in Swansea, 4 weeks at Asian Sound Radio in Manchester presenting and social media, as well as presenting and other bits at hospital stations Radio BGM in Llanelli and NH Sound in Abergavenny). He has also done a bit of television, hospital TV at Morriston Hospital (sadly no longer, as the heath authority decided it wasn't in its plans for the hospital revamp) where he has learned editing, filming and he even produced and presented his own programme. Find Phil on line at www.philengland.com or www.facebook.com/philengland and Twitter @philengland1

Transdiffusion

EMC RMC TMC
PMC Bitstream Sounds On
HHG HTW ITW Irish TV mb21
sub-TV Transdiffusion TodayEMCRMCTMCPMC

HHGHTWITWIrish TVmb21MHPsub-TVTTLP

 
mb21 by Mike Brown
Hosted by Astrohosts

Top

GDPR and Privacy Policy