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THE TRANSMISSION GALLERY
BRESSAY A
| Photos by Nigel Coote and Dave Stephen | Page last updated: 2024-08-06 |
| Additional text by Mike Smith Additional material from Mark Carver As at Keelylang Hill there are two towers at Bressay. The current towers are Bressay Mk 2 and Mk 3. There is a link at the foot of this page to the BBC RD report on the original Mk 1 tower, which entered service on 15-Apr-1964 with both 405-line, VHF channel 3, BBC TV and FM radio. The 405-line TV service closed on 4-Apr-1983. Bressay Mk 2 is a 70m tower built for UHF TV, which entered service with ITV on 24-Dec-1976. BBC1 & 2 from June 1977 and Channel 4 from November 1984. Interim DTT entered service in February 2000. DSO was on 5th and 19th May 2010. Bressay Mk 3 is a 71.5m tower built for the re-engineering of BBC FM radio to mixed polarisation and went into service in March 1986. Radio's 1 & 4 were added on 10th December 1993. ILR Shetland (SIBC) was added in October 1991. A UHF Tx aerial was added to the top of this tower for interim DTT multiplexes C & D, being out of group, on UHF Ch's 66 & 68 and therefore unable to use the Mk 2 tower UHF aerial. |
| There are also no less than six stacked VHF receive yagis for the ILR service. The programmes for SIBC were originally fed to the Bressay site from the studio in Lerwick via a low power radio link on 102.2 MHz (20W vertical), which also acts as a small filler for the town. Since 1994, however, the feed from the studio to the transmitter has been via UHF link. The 102.2 MHz transmitter is now essentially a standby service that listeners can retune to should Bressay fail, which has happened. |
| The second tower is used for VHF/FM radio broadcasting and this transmits the high power BBC national and local opt-out services together with the lower power Independent Local Radio station SIBC (Shetland Isles Broadcasting Company). |
| The transmitting aerials used by the BBC radio services are the six tiers of large "Coniex" crossed dipole aerial panels on three of the four faces, at the top of the 'radio mast'. Just above the Coniex panels there are UHF aerials which carried two of the pre-DSO DTT multiplexes (C & D). The others were carried via the main UHF aerials on the other tower. |
| Lower down the tower we see the two Rx logs for the BBC's RBS link from Keelylang Hill. The main programme feed is via SHF link from Fair Isle. Below the Orange mobile phone panels are SIBC's two vertical Marconi R1000 dipoles with rear reflectors. |
| Above: the view from the hill with the radio tower on the left and the television tower on the right |
| SHF links gong north and south??? For analogue UHF TV, Bressay took its broadcast feeds from Keelylang Hill on Orkney. These were received off air at a link station on Fair Isle and sent on from there to Bressay at SHF. The article 'Bringing Colour TV to the Shetland Isles' gives details of how the Fair Isle link was planned and established. The article was first published in July 1976 in IBA Tech Review 7: Service Planning and Propagation. James Muir comments: "I recall being extremely impressed with the quality of colour broadcast pictures from the Bressay UHF transmitter that I viewed during my holiday, particularly those of the BBC. Wimbledon coverage on the TV set in my hotel room was absolutely flawless, and quite a technical achievement (even in 1995) when you think of the transmission chain from London 1000 miles to the south, and in particular the RBL path from Rosemarkie some 200 miles to the south." |
Fair Isle (link site) | Keelylang Hill A
SIBC
BBC RD: Transmitting aerials for the Shetland station 1964
BBC Archive YouTube video about the start of TV in Shetland (1964)
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