Just up the road from the Llangurig UHF TV site, high up on a hill to the west of Llangurig is another NGW site called Llangurig Link. This site was built by the BBC to extend UHF TV coverage to Mid Wales and was used to provide the programme feeds to Long Mountain. The UHF transmissions from Blaenplwyf were received here and then send onwards to Long Mountain via 7 GHz SHF links. UHF transmissions at Long Mountain commenced during September 1976.
The off air signals received from Blaenplwyf at Llangurig link were due to be on a path that was to become obstructed by a Wind Farm development in the Cefn Mawr area. The wind turbine blades, once in use, were predicted to cause intermittent and variable reflections of the signals rendering the UHF RBL unusable for long periods of time, depending on the wind direction. Consequently the UHF RBL was replaced by an MPEG coded digital SHF link which went into service on the 26th November 2004.
At DSO in 2009, Long Mountain became line fed (albeit via a BT SHF link). Consequently this site is no longer used for TV distribution. |
