Vale FM (formerly Gold Radio) commenced programmes in 1995 from their studios on Longmead industrial estate in Shaftesbury, where they had the front of the building you can see in the pictures. The transmitter rack was in the main office, and consisted of 2 SBS FM25 transmitters, connected to Eddystone Amps. The antenna is about half way up the Vodafone mast, on the left of the pictures.
Midwest Radio took over the station in 2008, merging it with Ivel FM in Yeovil, and closed the Shaftesbury studio. Midwest was purchased by Celador and re-branded as a Breeze station in June 2012.
Shaftesbury is broadcast on 97.4, and their Blandford relay is on 96.6. The Blandford relay is an off air receiver and SBS transmitter, located at the North Dorset Council offices. When they were testing, they could not get enough signal from the off air receiver to give a stereo signal without hiss, so the receiver was set to mono. As far as we know, it still is, and mono audio is broadcast. |
