Over the Christmas 2020 break, I took the opportunity to compare the list of sites I had visited as part of my involvement with the roll-out of BBC DAB Phase 4 with the photos on mb21. Unsurprisingly, most of those sites have been updated with one exception (presumably due to its relatively remote location), and that is Skriaig.
I visited this site not strictly as part of the roll-out itself, but instead to help with a trial that the site was briefly being used for ahead of being pressed into operational service.
At the time, there was quite some data available about the performance of DAB and DAB+ at varying protection levels, but much of this was based on lab-based work rather than real world measurements. Skriaig presented a good opportunity to obtain more real world measurements in an area we knew would be free of co-channel interference. Block 10D was utilised as this has international clearance for use at the site, and so for a week or so in August 2014 the new transmission system was tuned to this channel to output a DAB multiplex configuration with a number of DAB and DAB+ channels in various modes under a test and development licence.
Following completion of the trial, the system was retuned to Block 12B and transmission of BBC National DAB commenced on 5th September 2014. |
