Portbury is a small village in the shadow of the hills that form the south side of the Avon Gorge. It overlooks Avonmouth and the Bristol Channel, but is screened from both Mendip and nearby Kings Weston Hill. The whole area enjoys pretty good reception of Wenvoe, but the relay is required to provide English programming.
It is a low powered relay, with two pairs of vertical crossed log periodic TX aerials pointing towards the village. The RX log periodic pair is also vertical and is pointed at Kings Weston Hill, which is clearly visible from the site.
Portbury was the last statutory Phase III relay station to enter service. Service date, 16th August 2000. Phase III of the UHF TV relay building programme was to extend 625-line coverage to population groups of as few as 200 people where this proved to be economic and practical. The official population served by Portbury was 210.
There were some analogue relays opened after Portbury but these were built to deal with CCI from the interim DTT transmissions. Some viewers in the area who were using Ridge Hill found their reception was degraded by adjacent channel interference when this relay was first went on test. |