![]() |
|
![]() |
|||||||||
![]() |
THE TRANSMISSION GALLERY
Photos by Peter Bigwood and Callum Clark Laird | Page last updated: 2014-01-11 |
|
From 15-Dec-1958 Thrumster broadcast 405-line BBC TV, VHF channel 1, service to Thurso and NE Scotland. This closed on 4th April 1983. Thrumster also carried BBC VHF national radio from 1 Mar 1960 until the switch to mixed polarisation and the move to Rumster Forest on 16th March 1984. Since then the station has been devoid of broadcast services. As you can see from the NGW sign it remains a Maintenance Base for the region, which includes the Orkney and Shetland Isles. Perhaps it also provides part of the programme feed link to Orkney too... can anyone confirm? |
The aerial cluster at the top is a navigation beacon. BELOW: Callum Clark Laird returned to the site in May 2013 and took the two photos that follow. He writes "Came up to Thurso on holiday. Out for the day and passed the transmitter and mast. I thought I would take the opportunity to take some photos for the Transmission Gallery". |
Whole site view |
Close up of the top |
Here's a real golden oldie photo, courtesy of an EBU monograph from the 1960s, showing the Band I ch 1 vertically polarised TV aerials interleaved within the same aperture as the Band II horizontally polarised FM aerials; Thrumster was the first site at which the BBC had attempted this technique; (Swingate was a subsequent example). |
BBC VHF 405 line transmitters
BBC RD: Service area in Caithness of the Thrumster and Orkney TV and VHF sound transmitters (1961)
BBC RD: Suppression of corona Thrumster experiments (1963)
BBC RD; Suppression of corona Thrumster experiments 2nd series (1963)
|
Back to TX Gallery index | TX main index
|