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THE TRANSMISSION GALLERY
TICK HILL
| Photos by Peter Leach (background info from Ray Cooper) | Page last updated: 2024-05-16 |
| Tick Hill, the ex-PCM link site east of Stoke-on-Trent. It used to run Sutton Coldfield > Tick Hill > Macclesfield Forest > Holme Moss. This route became redundant when TV distribution went to Energis fibre, which also had capacity for the PCM bearer channels. There are two SHF dishes on this mast, the larger one being the ex-PCM link looking at Sutton. Originally there was another large dish firing to Macclesfield Forset which would have been facing the camera in photo 3. (The line-of-site path from TIK to MCF just grazed the ground at a point about a kilometre to the north of TIK, where it crossed a farmer's access road. I used to wonder what would happen if somebody parked a large pantechnicon just at the critical point! Since 2004 is has also broadcast the Emap DAB service for Stoke-on-Trent. This site was built in 1972 with stereo transmissions on Radio 2 & 4 from Holme Moss commencing in August 1973. In 1980 it looked not much different than today. Local people thought it was an MOD site so everyone kept away. It always had the large dome Andrews microwave dish pointing south and the smaller lower dish (with skin cover) pointing towards BBC Radio Stoke-on-Trent building in Hanley. This is used as a studio TV link for simple live interviews back to BBC Birmingham Midlands Today News - it is rarely used for News24. The other small upper dish is the link to Sutton Common for the DAB feed. |
| The stacked dipole array is a typical low power low population DAB aerial array. Spilt into two halves (upper & lower) for operational reasons to maintain a service. Each horizontal boom has two phased dipoles giving approx 3dB gain in the forward and sides direction, polar diagram similar to an apple shape, so lower and upper aerials both have around 6dB gain. |
| GPS timing aerial for DAB transmitter |
Macclesfield Forest (Link site) | Sutton Coldfield
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