| Yorkshire Dales Radio began broadcasting on MW many years ago, from a small studio in Skipton. In recent years, rebranded as 'Fresh Radio', the station began a move largely - but not entirely - to FM. The station 'self-installed' FM transmitters in Richmond, Ilkley and Pateley Bridge. The latter two were fed via the internet, using standard PCs with soundcards and a fixed IP address. The audio quality left a lot to be desired and the feeds were less than reliable. The Ilkley transmitter was housed in a sports equipment shed in Ben Rydding, Ilkley. The Pately Bridge FM tx was housed in a barn, just off Old Church Lane, in the low, central part of the village, where the MW transmitter (it was to replace) was sited. The station was still looking for a site from which to implement the higher power Skipton FM service when it fell in to financial difficulties. A merger with the ill-fated Laser Broadcasting group made matters worse, and the station later closed. UKRD took over the Fresh Radio licence in January 2012, and began plans to expand the nearby Harrogate ILR service, Stray FM, to Skipton and Pateley Bridge, while handing over the Richmond FM transmitter to Star Radio (Northallerton). Pateley Bridge could now be an RBR site, as Stray FM was now going to be the feed, and reception of Stray FM's Harlow Hill transmitter in Harrogate on 97.2MHz was entirely possible, given a site on higher ground. So Ofcom sanctioned a site move to a farm at the top of Greenhow Hill, on a steep road climbing out of Pately Bridge, in a westerly direction, where a low power directional RBR tx was installed. The pictures (taken in December 2012) show the stacked slanted dipoles, with the RBR Yagi seen clearly just behind. Being a farm building, proper access to the site on private land was impossible, and the direction of sunlight wasn't favourable for photography. However, being a very low power site, just below a brow of a hill, combined with the directional nature of the tx array, means that less than half a mile further up the road, the 107.1MHz signal is completely non-existent. |
