At 271m aod, Bardon Hill is the highest point in Leicestershire and therefore an obvious choice of site for SHF link antennas. A large quarry is to the west of the hill.
Bardon Hill was used for a variety of purposes by the BBC starting with an SHF (7 GHz) repeater for a TV contribution link from Nottingham to Sutton Coldfield. Over time the facilities were expanded to include a feed to the Waltham transmitter, a radio car receive base, and a rotatable SHF link receive point for News OB's. The BBC installation consisted of the small tower and the adjacent stone clad building. In the early 1990's, East Midlands Electricity Board built the larger 7m tower as a comms node. The BBC rotator and fixed link dish were moved to the top of this new tower. With the demise of Pebble Mill in 2004, the OB rotator was fed on the distribution link to Waltham and onwards to the new BBC Nottingham premises, at Canal Street, for News OB's. With the change to fibre for distribution and use of satellite links the site is no longer used for these purposes.
Ofcom data gives a service date for the Leicestershire DAB multiplex of 29-Nov-2016. |
