I love walking holidays in Shetland, so much so that I came back again in July 2014 following a short holiday in June 2014! In the process, I captured some pictures of the Fitful Head Tx on Monday, 7 July 2014.
This site is right at the SW tip of the Shetland Mainland, and is literally on a cliff-top with a near-vertical drop of 900 feet into the Atlantic Ocean right behind it!
This is a historic site as in days gone by, before the advent of the Fair Isle link station, it was used to receive off-air 405-line Band I TV and Band II FM services directly from Orkney before routing the services via SHF to Bressay some 25 miles to the north. When I was there the FM services from Keelylang Hill on Orkney were romping in with clear stereo on my mobile phone's FM tuner despite an overseas path of around 80 miles.
These days the site is also home to a NATS radar station and various coastguard communication antennas. The TV Tx is on a wooden pole which, frankly, has seen better days and looks like it is beginning to keel over as a result of the Atlantic storms! Arqiva take note.... |
