UK Broadcast Transmission
Main indexMain GalleryFeaturesInfoSend in your photos
Desktop wallpaperMailing listsFAQsContact
The LibraryTeletextMHPAstrohosts

THE TRANSMISSION GALLERY

Photos by Peter Bigwood and Callum Clark Laird Page last updated: 2014-01-11
Thrumster Highland
NGR: ND344456 Maps: Google  Bing (Ord Surv)   Site Height: 72m      Structure Height: 97m
Digital TV:
National Radio:
Local Radio:
Digital Radio:
Comments:

Show historic services

Thrumster Photos

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).

Rumster Forest | Thurso

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)

Please let us know if the photographs for this site need updating or improved detail.
To do so, click here.

Back to TX Gallery index | TX main index

mb21 by Mike Brown
Hosted by Astrohosts
Top

GDPR and Privacy Policy