Update June 2013: Alexander Lakey has been in touch and tells us that the white cylinder is in fact the Switchdigital antenna. It's an omni directional Band III tx aerial, which makes it slightly unusual for use at a low powered site like this. Ofcom parameters give an omnidirectional HRP at 30 m agl for London 2 DAB, and list the D1 service as directional with an agl of 26m, implying that the double folded-dipole aerial a few feet below the top of the mast is used for the latter service.
Alex adds:
There were plans for D1 to add a filler site on another cell tower just further down the road,
towards Harefield (at the junction of White Hill and Jackets Lane) but if I remember correctly the mast loading was too high to add any band III antennas, and therefore D1 didn't end up there.
This site (like all the London II sites) is fed in a bi-directional ring of microwave links, which distributes the ETI stream both ways around the network of sites to provide resilient service. Really neat design. |
