I tried to photograph this site last year, but I'd forgotten to buy the relevant OS map. I found the studios by following my nose and saw that the HP dipole/reflector link aerial was directed towards a large tower on the hillside. But without the map it was hopeless trying to get to the tower, in an area where most places seemed to be 'prohibited'.
This year (2009) I went back and found that access to the tower was easy; it was just half a mile along a public footpath. However there were lots of scary MOD notices prohibiting virtually everything, and it was a really nasty, windy, rainy day. Nevertheless I hiked up the hill, finding that the big tower belonged to Arqiva and had only one vaguely broadcast-looking aerial, a VP thing with two driven elements that seemed to be firing towards the north-east, or towards Tidworth camp nearby.
Nearby was a much smaller installation which, although it had not one visible word of identification, had 'Army' written all over it. There was an HP dipole/reflector looking towards the studio down in the camp, so it simply had to be the other end of the link. There was also an inverted V medium wave aerial. There were two VP dipoles at the top and one half way down, so which was the FM Tx aerial I don't know. Or was it the two-driven-elements thing on the big tower next door?
While I was taking my pictures a small khaki helicopter flew around in circles very close, and then five minutes later I heard a motorbike coming up the track. But the bike was just a scramble rider, so I didn't end up in Guantanamo Nick after all.
Apparently the previously redundant MF aerial has recently been brought back into service for BFBS Gurkha Radio. |
