 |
UK Broadcast Transmission |
         |
|
    |
|
|
|
|
|||||||||
|
|||||||||||
THE TRANSMISSION GALLERY
| Photos by Ian Chalmers | Page last updated: 2017-04-14 |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
| Now here's an interesting one... A pleasant walk down the bank of the river Severn from Weir Lane takes you near enough to see this curious structure. There were no animals or crops in the fields when I went there, so I went for a closer look... |
| It certainly looks like an old fashioned medium wave T aerial, with an ATU stuck on the centre pole. However, there's no sign of a Dr Who box, but I suppose the TX could be in one of the buildings next to the farm. Looking at an aerial photo of the area, you can see a straight line crop mark from a hut by the farm to the centre pole of the array. |
| The line of a buried cable? It's not a path and currently not visible from the ground. This is getting more like that TV program where they look for vanished Roman buildings! (It's since been confirmed that this clever bit of detective work is correct) The losses through such a long (~200 m) feeder may not be significant at 738 kHz. |
| Now that I've put the pictures on my computer, I can see a curious object near the hut at the other side of the field that may be a VHF/UHF RX aerial. |
| [Ed] As originally built for the launch of BBC Hereford & Worcester on 14-Feb-1989, the transmitter was located beside the aerial. However this location lies in the flood plain of both the river's Severn and Teme. The transmitter was relocated to this building, some 200m from the aerial, in October 2003, to prevent any future flooding. We understand that the transmitter power output was increased from 400W to 435W to offset the increased loss on the longer feeder. The new building is also equipped with an RBS aerial on Malvern. |
| It looks a bit like this array was knocked up with some surplus power line stuff, as the poles and insulators look like the sort of thing seen on local small rural power lines. In fact it's not - there's a very similar installation at Lacock, and until a few years ago there was also one at Burnaston Lane. However it's all a bit of a contrast to BBC Hereford & Worcester's other MF site at Wooferton, just over 20 miles away! |
Burnaston Lane | Lacock | Woofferton
Tricks of the Trade: - BBC Local Radio on the Cheap
| |
Back to TX Gallery index | TX main index
|
