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THE TRANSMISSION GALLERY
CAIRN GORM
| Photos by Linda Muir (via James Muir) | Page last updated: 2015-10-29 |
| My wife Linda took these pictures of the highest broadcast Tx site in the British Isles on Friday afternoon, 16 October 2015. She was on an October mid-term break with our son in the Aviemore area, and after having taken the funicular railway up Cairn Gorm mountain, she noticed some aerials near the top Ptarmigan Station at 1080m above sea level which she thought I might be interested in... |
| Two FM services are transmitted from this site to a large area of the Spey Valley and beyond: a relay on 96.6 MHz of the Moray Firth Radio (MFR) output from Mounteagle on the Black Isle, and a local service, Speysound, on 107.1 MHz. The Ofcom Tx Params spreadsheet has both services utilising equal VP and HP outputs from this site, so I am guessing that the slant dipole on the left is the Tx antenna for both. The vertical UHF yagi under the slant dipole is, I suspect, used for receiving the programme feed for Speysound from its studios in Aviemore some 14 km distant, and the vertical dipole on the right is possibly used for off-air reception of Mounteagle to provide the MFR feed, or may simply be for comms in the adjacent ski-area No equipment cabins visible, however it looks like there is cabling running to the funcicular station just behind the point where the picture was taken |
| Editor's note: under extreme zoom the small plate just below the dipole on the right seems to be a "warning: radio transmitter" sign so this is perhaps used for some non-broadcast purpose In Speysound's licence application (linked below) there is some additional information about the past and planned engineering arrangements: - there was a 48 MHz link originally for MFM, via Aviemore. It was used for part-time RSLs which were a local opt-out on MFM's frequency - MFM planned a direct link from Inverness to the site and the local link would become available for Speysound - the transmitters are located in accommodation provided by the railway - the support structure is part of a ski chairlift (If the link is still on 48 MHz the antenna is presumably located at the transmitter building) |
| Stunning views from this very elevated location towards the Spey Valley and Aviemore. |
| Looking down the course of the Cairn Gorm funicular railway. |
Speysound Radio licence application (Ofcom PDF)
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