I was Chief Engineer of a directional AM for decades (among other stations) and when they started putting up cellular towers, I used to get calls asking us to power down so the cell site workers could work on the pole without receiving love nibbles from it. Keep in mind, those are grounded poles and towers that were absorbing enough of the RF to have high voltage points along their length. I helped detune several for them so the workers could work on them safely while I stayed on the air. But all it took was for them to add some more feedlines or otherwise change the electrical length of the tower and the detuning was disabled.
LOL.... Worked in a factory that that had miles and miles of unsheilded twisted pair phone lines. There was a 50000 watt AM monster about a mile down the road. We had a free muzak system on every phone in the building. It was comical trying to actually use it as a phone system. I never got bit by the phones but there were plenty of other things like fences, window frames, and a couple of times a week an elevator cable would energize and trip out the whole system.
Nothing to do with Tesla...he was a late-comer to radio. Say thanks to James Clerk Maxwell and Heinrich Hertz.. Maxwell wrote the theoretical Mathematics which predicted Electromagnetic radiation...radio. Hertz was the first to demonstrate radio...long before the upstart Tesla.
It is easy to forget that radio wave are actual power being transmitted through the air. At first it didn't dawn on me why the two towers a mile away were what was causing the danger. Definitely something to remember when exploring old antenna sites!
I've seen people make devices to "tap into this free source of power" and light an LED with it or something. I don't think the FCC would appreciate you sapping radiostations' power output for your own personal use. I don't know the law exactly, but a large enough reciever could potentially attenuate the signal a great deal for everybody else. I'm sure in the case described in the video, it probably caused a lot of disruptions to transmission.
@@VoidHalo There are demonstrations of AM transmitter arrays with one element down and as the now "dead" element is grounded for safety, a would be lethal hot arc strikes as the clip gets close, with the clear as day audio imposed on the hiss. It's picking up the RF from the other still operational transmitters in the array. They run multi 6 digit power figures ERP. If you're stupid enough to connect yourself between an active element and ground, bring sauce for the first responders. You're done.
I once went to a pharmacy near to Moorside Edge, to sort out their IT system. While I was there, I used their FAX/phone and noticed Talksport was breaking through on the handset. The staff said it was something they had learned to live with. I has a spare ADSL filter in the car, and that cured it completely.
I used to live less than half a mile from this transmitter while growing up. One year I was given an electronics set to play with which included an AM radio that I could build. The signal was so strong that it didn’t need the antenna wire attached!
Before the telephone system went digital beyond the local loop, I used to be able to hear to local am stations on the landline telephone handset when it was on hook. Weird then, but not anymore when they went digital beyond the local loop.
In Bob Noakes book Last of the pirates, he mentioned getting shocks of Carolines aerial when they were off air. The signal from Veronica and RNI a mile away produced enough electricity in Carolines mast to light a florescent tube! This was used to light the ship for safety reasons when all of carolines generators had failed.
Many,,years ago, our revered ex-Middlesex Scoutmaster with his Excelsior motorbike told us that the red navigation lights on the 4YA AM masts on Otago Peninsula,,Dunedin NZ, were only tied on, with no connecting wires. We couldn't quite get it that the radiated power was enough to activate the light bulbs,,or maybe they were short fluorescent tubes. ...on an aside,,, since someone mentioned local accents.... noticing the hard "g" sounds the narrator has on the end of his "xxng" words.... local, regional accent,,wonder where the limits of this are.... The South Island has its famous Scots originated "Southland burr" with the long "rr" as in "burrrn".
This video in the beginning reminds my of what they called as a "fantom" antenna. A radioamatour on the westcoust in Norway could not reach repeater on the other side of a mountain. He had 3 yageybeems. He set up one at home, and 2 beams back to back on top of the moutain, and then he was able to reach the repeater!!! Nice work I think! The best from LB1NH Arild 🙂
Well as Y2K manager for WSP I had rapidly to learn everything from HVAC to substations. It was mostly BMS though. And climbing up any broadcasting mast definitely not a good idea. (Afterwards working for Wates they thought it a good idea to put me in charge of excavation and reinfored concrete. That was a rapid learning curve as well)
I witnessed an HVAC guy do the funky chicken dance when he stuck his finger in the wrong spot while servicing my heat pump. Glad I was there, had he passed out or gotten stuck he'd have been in a tight spot if he were alone.
At first I wondered why it could be dangerous even when switched off, then when you mentioned the other two masts nearby I knew what the problem would be. We did a special event radio demonstration maybe 15 years ago at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester and located in the old railway station with a long wire outside. Graham had brought an countrpoise earth and tuner and connected it up while I was transmitting on my h/b 5 Watt output radio. He jumped back as he had received a shock. That's only 5 Watts. G4GHB.
Pennine Radio is a blast from my past - the first local independent radio we could listen to in Bradford in the 1970s and we knew where the studios were!
CONGRATS ON HITTING 100K SUBSCRIBERS!!! Brings back a lot of memories working at various transmitter sites in the States. Had to do a cable repair for a paging transmitter on top of the John Hancock building in Chicago. It was a restricted antenna site where one could only enter the roof area two times a year unless you had these special RF "suits" to wear which were grounded. Not having access to such attire we had to wait until the January major maintenance of the site to conduct our repair. Reason is that the two masts on top of the building house the antennas for all of the FM radio stations on one mast and the TV masters on the second mast. Combined output power alone from the TV masters was well over 800,000 watts combined visual and aural, this was actual watts NOT ERP. The FM masters were at least 200,000 watts into the antenna. Boy was it freezing up there in January! A friend who was in the Navy told me of an issue as they came close to port, they had an issue with seagulls coming in and roosting under the pulsed radar array antenna on the carrier he was stationed on. Let’s just say that those sailors who were on the Chiefs sh!t list were tasked with gathering dead gulls and tossing them overboard. The ship also had an incident where an electronics tech in the hangar bay accidentally activated radar countermeasures on one of the aircraft he was working on, thank goodness the rest of the team was in the galley for chow, he wound up with nerve damage from the high RF exposure.
Great story and production, Lewis! RF fields decay following the inverse square law, but the TX powers here are so high, there is danger of RF burns at relatively large distances.
I love this channel. Congratulations Lewis - you should feel immensely proud of achieving 100K subscribers. I'm a broadcast geek and I'd love to see more TV and IP related content if that's possible in the future? Either way, looking forward to more videos like this! All the best, J.
I must agree , your progress has been great to watch Lewis , i love it when you go down the numerous rabbit holes , a techy and a investigative journalist , top bloke indeed , thanks
Also be aware of lokal thunderflashes. they also could cause verry high voltages on the isolated tower. Same goes with airplanes. When refueling them you have to connect a ground lead first, to prevent flashes caused by static electricity
It’s over decades certainly, but it’s still amazing just how much change went on within radio in this one regional area. It makes it seem rather volatile from the outside looking in. But very interesting as well. Really really enjoy the content! Well done, sir. Well done indeed. 👍🏼
The original local commercial radio stations were precisely that - local stations with local content - not always local voices, but we forgive them for that - as long as they pronounced the local places properly - though I think they were given training or something - anything broadcast on that station was being broadcast from that station - some stations made programmes that were ultimately broadcast by other stations that were suitable for national broadcast, but there was no actual network programming - the only thing you were likely to hear on most stations simultaneously was the news from IRN - some stations included the IRN news within the bulletin, then had local news, whereas others mixed the two together - a pin item from IRN with the associated report, followed by a local story, alternating between the two - but, for the most part, everything was broadcast from the station itself - not some remote location in somewhere like London- although the stations had only IRN from 7 pm whether or not they took the regular daytime feed live - often broadcast specialist music shows in the early evenings, built around classical or rock or soul or folk - but they usually came from the station - by the mid-80s, some stations “merged” (really a takeover bid by the bigger of the two) - Metro and Tees being an example- between about 1986 and 1988, Radio Tees simulcast Metro Radio, originally from 1 am, then from 10 pm, then from 7 pm - Radio Tees still claimed to be broadcasting 24 hours a day - but with Metro Radio taking over between 7 pm and 7 am, it was not the case - even more bizarre was that Radio Tees relayed Metro via a landline, resulting in the broadcast being relayed in mono - how that = 24 hours a day in stereo, when it’s 12 hours a day in stereo from Stockton and 12 hours a day in mono from Swalwell? The downfall for local radio stations was the Network Chart Show - although it could be heard in stereo on Capital Radio and stations nearby who could use a radio to relay it in stereo, it was put out using the same landline they used for IRN - fine for the news, but hopeless for music- it was like listening on a portable kitchen radio! They did eventually use a satellite link, which improved reception! A radio station was offered to local commercial stations as an all night sustaining service - it was in stereo - called Radio Radio, but identifying itself as The Superstation, not all stations carried it - some only took it from midnight or 2 am, but others took it all - when that closed down, that saw some big companies turning into conglomerates and taking over each other - it was not uncommon to have programmes on several different stations simultaneously - then the AM services became various quasi-national stations with only local news, traffic news and local ads - national stations with limited local content - now they’re all Greatest Hits Radio or Heart!
You certainly nailed it... IMO there really isn't any good local commercial radio in the UK anymore, especially on AM where services are shutting down. In Surrey, the most reliable local station is BBC Surrey and even that is shared with BBC Sussex. Sure there are some community stations (Kane FM in Guildford comes to mind) but their coverage is... pants. I know this is way off topic to the OP but with AM shutting down that mast in Vicars Lot might not get so excited by nearby Mooreside Edge anymore. Though it's probable the site may be gone and the FM relocated to a cellphone mast before Mooreside Edge goes away too. Honestly soon we'll be talking about the shutdown of FM analogue in the same way we're talking about AM shutdown. And everything will be a quasi national DAB+ service.
It is the same reason why switched-off high-voltage wires have voltage when a switched-on wire is close to this switched-off wire. You have to earth the switched-off wire, then it is really de-energised.
I grew up within 3 miles of Emley Moor, so all of this scenery is very familiar to me. That close to Emley Moor we could get teletext with no antenna connected, but getting a TV picture without ghosts was a nightmare.
You should consider making a detailed video or two on the Emley Moor tower! Not being from the UK, I was not aware of it, and suspect it's completely unknown to most in North America. It's an absolutely exceptional structure, and its looks are very imposing. I would have guessed such a thing belonged in the Soviet Union, not current day Great Britain. I see now you have some older videos visiting it. I suspect it's rather mundane to you. But being from the US, it's completely different from what I'm used to seeing, and really remarkable! At best you could compare it to the CN Tower in Toronto, or Space Needle in Seattle, which are tourist attractions, and designed very differently overall. The Emley Moor tower is definitely all business, and rather stark and brutal in its appearance! I don't think Americans are used to seeing all-concrete, purpose-built, freestanding radio towers. I appreciate all your videos.
The previous tower, which I visited on a public open day in about 1967, was a more conventional steel mast with guy cables. It collapsed in severe winter weather a few years later, because the weight of ice that formed overloaded the cables. So the transmitter that replaced it in 1971 was built on a much more imposing scale, and as you know it has stood the test of time.
I've seen a video of a tool drop resulting in a cable snap and tower collapse, pretty amazing that this kind of electrocution hazard can be caused so far away. Thanks for your great and unique videos and content.
@@NinoJoel It was a wrench, and yeah it was for 2" or 2.5" nuts. It fell several hundred feet before it hit the cable and it cut in enough to snap it. I'll try to find the video of it and reply back.
@@NinoJoel This is the closest I can find now and I think it may be where I saw the story originally. Maybe not :P Frontline story on cell tower deaths ruclips.net/video/ue5fMQ9vZCU/видео.html
@@DoctorMangler dam the chances of hitting that steel wire are insanely low. What an unlucky b@stard . Reminds me of an accident in Poland where a worker accidentally took of a support cable while he was working on the tower resulting in a collapse and his death.
96.9 viking fm oh that's an old one from when I used to clog around in my old X reg fiesta it was a good station around Hull and Scunthorpe and grimsby. Cheers Lewis another great video
wonderful, if you like classic gold, will you listen to the Easy listening mega pulse gold 2 network? or should i switch to Pulse hallam Yorkshire gold AM? Maybe I should just stick to the pro Gold late night mega share Gold Pulse 1 network! ....ha
I found this very interesting, I worked at the Bradford studios in the late 80s and remember playing different jingles on Classic Gold on 1278 and 1530 I always wondered where the 1530 transmitter was located now I know
Done a few surveys on Arqiva sites where there was a standard lattice tower (supporting cell equipment etc) in the same land as a MF mast or near a sloping wire. All of them were supervised by an engineer and when climbing would only be able to use a RF monitor that covered kHz range which the Nardalert S3 did but the cheaper ones used in the cellular industry don’t. Never seen anything untoward on the monitors on-site, but assume if winching up kit/steel it could be an issue.
nice 1 lewis i live in the west country very much same here our mendip tv and radio transmitter is still going strong i am 25 miles from it. its a beast does all the dab radio too. many moons ago gb3 wr was there it was said they could receive gb3 wr in london thanks lewis 73 m3hnl
I'd be fascinated over what you could find out about the stations around Scarborough (Both Irton Moor GCHQ and the dishes - yep - dishes used to transmit TV signal to the town below).
For me, it's interesting each country has its own FM antenna systems, here we still rely on V shaped dipoles with a reflector from Aldena. The antenna here used is forbidden in the Benelux.
same with some scaffolding rigs. I worked on many film sets with massife scaffolding arrangments, before we earthed the towers down there was often a large mesurable differance to ground. With so much kit been wireless thesedays, this problem is only getting worse. Ive always said, earthing / grounding is such an under raited safty system.
There's a wind turbine in the background close to the mast, would that have been installed to help power the transmitter (reducing the load on the DNO cables)?
Unless the masts happen to be fed from a completely separate supply I'd assume all of the grid-tied turbines up there would be contributing to the local network. I wouldn't have thought it installed for that specific purpose though - it's just a particularly favourable location for siting turbines.
As always fascinating unique content ! Just longing for the day when all those high power transmitters are switched off for good certainly talksport or talkbore as I call it
My biggest FM is 100kw and biggest AM is 1kw. The latter is in the same building as the studios and the ground itself isn't great so I chase RF demons out things all the time. I have had equipment not connected to anything but a bit of wire I was removing and gotten a shock off it. That close pretty much anything is an antenna. If I am somewhat near the tuning coil I can make the curly lightbulbs light up in my hand. I sometimes have to remote in or drive out to lower power on my FM so climbers can go up near the bays. In the analog days my predecessor would get complaints and have to go to houses near the towers to add some filtering to a tv or hifi.
Do you happen to know what the single guyed mast at Farlington is for? (Another Arquiva) Best I could find was local radio years ago, bit nothing current
another "big loop" parasitic "antenna" that can accidentally give you a "zap" if you are close to a high power MW (or shortwave) transmitter is big tower cranes.... big metal upright, long metal boom & metal cable going back down to the ground basically forms a big conductive receive loop so not a good idea to stand on the ground & grab the hook when it descends (always make sure there is a "shorting tail" hitting the ground before you grab anything (just like rescue chopper winch-men have a conductive tail before they touch anything on the ground).
Most People do not realize how RF works and be dangerous you can hold up a tube from a office light under a high voltage line and it will light up . We take a small tube and tape them to our radio antennas and light them when the mic is keyed .
I remember seeing a video about the power of am tower transmitting power a few years back and it had construction guys maybe 1 mile or so maybe more I can't remember but they were using a crane or some thing and and the hook on it and another piece of metal was I think arcing and you were able to hear to station and I saw this video on youtube. One personal experience I had was when I was living in a house about 15 minutes from where I live now and there was a radio tower not that far away and I think it was an am tower possibly cause in the house especially at night I would hear voices coming through the hvac vents and I know it sounds crazy but I did hear them and I also searched pretty much the entire house for maybe a radio that was on but there was none to be found. did hear though that there was an am radio station in the next town which was Watertown Mn which was probably maybe 5 or 6 miles away but not sure.
Would you consider doing a video on companies like arqiva? i saw their logo in your last video and thought nothing of it, but then walked past there office in london on my way home, and again here
How do you "switch off" a tower? I can see "switching off" the transmitter feeding an antenna on the tower, but I've never seen an on off switch on a tower.
@@tazmaniachill The masts are usually assembled in sections on the ground and each section is hoisted into position using a gin pole attached to the previous sections. When a new section is installed the gin pole is raised up onto the new section and the process is repeated until the mast is completed.
@@tazmaniachillthere's video of tower construction here on RUclips. It's scary to see 2 guys at the top of the completed part while a helicopter lowers the next 100 feet onto and the guys have to line it up.
Like the military uses a gloved wand to discharge static from fighter canopies, maybe they could use this approach before starting work on the antenna.
@FUL0H8, Once the airplane canopy is discharged, whoever touches it is free from shocks until it charges up again, most likely from flying. The radio station antenna mast is different, it is constantly receiving RF energy from the other station's transmitter, it's not something that could be discharged.
FM coverage is all about height above average terrain, taller is better. Nice location, imagine a 4 or 500 M tower in the middle of a housing estate. Consultants make a tidy sum keeping sites legal.
Наука
I was Chief Engineer of a directional AM for decades (among other stations) and when they started putting up cellular towers, I used to get calls asking us to power down so the cell site workers could work on the pole without receiving love nibbles from it. Keep in mind, those are grounded poles and towers that were absorbing enough of the RF to have high voltage points along their length. I helped detune several for them so the workers could work on them safely while I stayed on the air. But all it took was for them to add some more feedlines or otherwise change the electrical length of the tower and the detuning was disabled.
love nibbles ;-)
Nibbles and bytes of trans-love@@NigelJones - the AM transmitter was a cause to many sparks just from nearby metal fence.
Love nibbles. I am gonna use that one.
Hit 52 and miss those "love nibbles" 🤣🤣
LOL.... Worked in a factory that that had miles and miles of unsheilded twisted pair phone lines. There was a 50000 watt AM monster about a mile down the road. We had a free muzak system on every phone in the building. It was comical trying to actually use it as a phone system. I never got bit by the phones but there were plenty of other things like fences, window frames, and a couple of times a week an elevator cable would energize and trip out the whole system.
Shocked by transmitted power from a mile away. Nicola Tesla smiles upon us.
Nikola, not Nicola.
He was a rare brilliant genius, not Coca Cola.
or a Swiss cough drop @@foureyedchick
ole mate nikki was ahead of his time
Nothing to do with Tesla...he was a late-comer to radio.
Say thanks to James Clerk Maxwell and Heinrich Hertz..
Maxwell wrote the theoretical Mathematics which predicted Electromagnetic radiation...radio.
Hertz was the first to demonstrate radio...long before the upstart Tesla.
It is easy to forget that radio wave are actual power being transmitted through the air. At first it didn't dawn on me why the two towers a mile away were what was causing the danger. Definitely something to remember when exploring old antenna sites!
Personally I'm waiting for someone to tongue test one
@@MadScientist267 that would be a shockingly heart stopping experience I am sure. But someone should check it to be sure!
@@MadScientist267 Yeah, in the middle of a freezing cold winter!
I've seen people make devices to "tap into this free source of power" and light an LED with it or something. I don't think the FCC would appreciate you sapping radiostations' power output for your own personal use. I don't know the law exactly, but a large enough reciever could potentially attenuate the signal a great deal for everybody else. I'm sure in the case described in the video, it probably caused a lot of disruptions to transmission.
@@VoidHalo There are demonstrations of AM transmitter arrays with one element down and as the now "dead" element is grounded for safety, a would be lethal hot arc strikes as the clip gets close, with the clear as day audio imposed on the hiss.
It's picking up the RF from the other still operational transmitters in the array. They run multi 6 digit power figures ERP. If you're stupid enough to connect yourself between an active element and ground, bring sauce for the first responders. You're done.
I once went to a pharmacy near to Moorside Edge, to sort out their IT system. While I was there, I used their FAX/phone and noticed Talksport was breaking through on the handset. The staff said it was something they had learned to live with. I has a spare ADSL filter in the car, and that cured it completely.
I used to live less than half a mile from this transmitter while growing up. One year I was given an electronics set to play with which included an AM radio that I could build. The signal was so strong that it didn’t need the antenna wire attached!
I had a similar set, I think it was called "Electronics in action". It had basic schematics and these spring thing on a board to connect wires too.
Before the telephone system went digital beyond the local loop, I used to be able to hear to local am stations on the landline telephone handset when it was on hook. Weird then, but not anymore when they went digital beyond the local loop.
Again, your drone work is excellent. The shot of the plane flying by the antenna is most impressive! Thanks.
In Bob Noakes book Last of the pirates, he mentioned getting shocks of Carolines aerial when they were off air. The signal from Veronica and RNI a mile away produced enough electricity in Carolines mast to light a florescent tube! This was used to light the ship for safety reasons when all of carolines generators had failed.
Many,,years ago, our revered ex-Middlesex Scoutmaster with his Excelsior motorbike told us that the red navigation lights on the 4YA AM masts on Otago Peninsula,,Dunedin NZ, were only tied on, with no connecting wires. We couldn't quite get it that the radiated power was enough to activate the light bulbs,,or maybe they were short fluorescent tubes.
...on an aside,,, since someone mentioned local accents.... noticing the hard "g" sounds the narrator has on the end of his "xxng" words.... local, regional accent,,wonder where the limits of this are....
The South Island has its famous Scots originated "Southland burr" with the long "rr" as in "burrrn".
100 K subscribers? Way to go! You deserve all the attention after all the work and research that you do.
Wow, thank you!
Congratulations on the milestone. I have got bit by an antenna before. It wasn't connected to anything at the time. It was a heck of a sting though.
Thanks so much mate!
@@Willam_J I learned that lesson before I could even drive. It was memorable enough I shall not repeat the mistake. 🤣
What happened to the dog? :) @@Willam_J
@@TymexComputing It peed on an ungrounded antenna tower :(
It's called static, you need to discharge your antenna, especially after a storm
This video in the beginning reminds my of what they called as a "fantom" antenna. A radioamatour on the westcoust in Norway could not reach repeater on the other side of a mountain. He had 3 yageybeems. He set up one at home, and 2 beams back to back on top of the moutain, and then he was able to reach the repeater!!! Nice work I think! The best from LB1NH Arild 🙂
I had no interest in radio stations etc and for some reason RUclips reccomended your channel...
Now I'm hooked! These are great videos ❤
I'm an HVAC guy, this is all wizardry to me, but I like it, it's like when I first learned of Coloumbs 😂😂😂
Well as Y2K manager for WSP I had rapidly to learn everything from HVAC to substations. It was mostly BMS though. And climbing up any broadcasting mast definitely not a good idea. (Afterwards working for Wates they thought it a good idea to put me in charge of excavation and reinfored concrete. That was a rapid learning curve as well)
I witnessed an HVAC guy do the funky chicken dance when he stuck his finger in the wrong spot while servicing my heat pump. Glad I was there, had he passed out or gotten stuck he'd have been in a tight spot if he were alone.
Dear Ringway.
Congratulations on a well deserved 100 k subscribers.
At first I wondered why it could be dangerous even when switched off, then when you mentioned the other two masts nearby I knew what the problem would be.
We did a special event radio demonstration maybe 15 years ago at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester and located in the old railway station with a long wire outside.
Graham had brought an countrpoise earth and tuner and connected it up while I was transmitting on my h/b 5 Watt output radio. He jumped back as he had received a shock. That's only 5 Watts.
G4GHB.
Bauer is the worst thing ever to happen to broadcast radio in the UK.
Pennine Radio is a blast from my past - the first local independent radio we could listen to in Bradford in the 1970s and we knew where the studios were!
CONGRATS ON HITTING 100K SUBSCRIBERS!!!
Brings back a lot of memories working at various transmitter sites in the States. Had to do a cable repair for a paging transmitter on top of the John Hancock building in Chicago. It was a restricted antenna site where one could only enter the roof area two times a year unless you had these special RF "suits" to wear which were grounded. Not having access to such attire we had to wait until the January major maintenance of the site to conduct our repair. Reason is that the two masts on top of the building house the antennas for all of the FM radio stations on one mast and the TV masters on the second mast. Combined output power alone from the TV masters was well over 800,000 watts combined visual and aural, this was actual watts NOT ERP. The FM masters were at least 200,000 watts into the antenna. Boy was it freezing up there in January!
A friend who was in the Navy told me of an issue as they came close to port, they had an issue with seagulls coming in and roosting under the pulsed radar array antenna on the carrier he was stationed on. Let’s just say that those sailors who were on the Chiefs sh!t list were tasked with gathering dead gulls and tossing them overboard. The ship also had an incident where an electronics tech in the hangar bay accidentally activated radar countermeasures on one of the aircraft he was working on, thank goodness the rest of the team was in the galley for chow, he wound up with nerve damage from the high RF exposure.
Towers are great at turning RF into happy tingles ⚡️
Yes they are!
Great story and production, Lewis! RF fields decay following the inverse square law, but the TX powers here are so high, there is danger of RF burns at relatively large distances.
Thanks Clint!
I love this channel. Congratulations Lewis - you should feel immensely proud of achieving 100K subscribers. I'm a broadcast geek and I'd love to see more TV and IP related content if that's possible in the future? Either way, looking forward to more videos like this! All the best, J.
I must agree , your progress has been great to watch Lewis , i love it when you go down the numerous rabbit holes , a techy and a investigative journalist , top bloke indeed , thanks
I feel pretty lucky to recognize exactly what this video was going to be about as soon as I saw the directional AM sticks.
Also be aware of lokal thunderflashes. they also could cause verry high voltages on the isolated tower.
Same goes with airplanes. When refueling them you have to connect a ground lead first, to prevent flashes caused by static electricity
It’s over decades certainly, but it’s still amazing just how much change went on within radio in this one regional area. It makes it seem rather volatile from the outside looking in. But very interesting as well.
Really really enjoy the content! Well done, sir. Well done indeed. 👍🏼
The original local commercial radio stations were precisely that - local stations with local content - not always local voices, but we forgive them for that - as long as they pronounced the local places properly - though I think they were given training or something - anything broadcast on that station was being broadcast from that station - some stations made programmes that were ultimately broadcast by other stations that were suitable for national broadcast, but there was no actual network programming - the only thing you were likely to hear on most stations simultaneously was the news from IRN - some stations included the IRN news within the bulletin, then had local news, whereas others mixed the two together - a pin item from IRN with the associated report, followed by a local story, alternating between the two - but, for the most part, everything was broadcast from the station itself - not some remote location in somewhere like London- although the stations had only IRN from 7 pm whether or not they took the regular daytime feed live - often broadcast specialist music shows in the early evenings, built around classical or rock or soul or folk - but they usually came from the station - by the mid-80s, some stations “merged” (really a takeover bid by the bigger of the two) - Metro and Tees being an example- between about 1986 and 1988, Radio Tees simulcast Metro Radio, originally from 1 am, then from 10 pm, then from 7 pm - Radio Tees still claimed to be broadcasting 24 hours a day - but with Metro Radio taking over between 7 pm and 7 am, it was not the case - even more bizarre was that Radio Tees relayed Metro via a landline, resulting in the broadcast being relayed in mono - how that = 24 hours a day in stereo, when it’s 12 hours a day in stereo from Stockton and 12 hours a day in mono from Swalwell?
The downfall for local radio stations was the Network Chart Show - although it could be heard in stereo on Capital Radio and stations nearby who could use a radio to relay it in stereo, it was put out using the same landline they used for IRN - fine for the news, but hopeless for music- it was like listening on a portable kitchen radio! They did eventually use a satellite link, which improved reception!
A radio station was offered to local commercial stations as an all night sustaining service - it was in stereo - called Radio Radio, but identifying itself as The Superstation, not all stations carried it - some only took it from midnight or 2 am, but others took it all - when that closed down, that saw some big companies turning into conglomerates and taking over each other - it was not uncommon to have programmes on several different stations simultaneously - then the AM services became various quasi-national stations with only local news, traffic news and local ads - national stations with limited local content - now they’re all Greatest Hits Radio or Heart!
Hehe British place names.... Scunthorp anyone... Peniston perhaps... mwhahah
As I read this the 80s jingle came to my head: 104 “capital reiiii deeeoooo🎶”
You certainly nailed it... IMO there really isn't any good local commercial radio in the UK anymore, especially on AM where services are shutting down. In Surrey, the most reliable local station is BBC Surrey and even that is shared with BBC Sussex. Sure there are some community stations (Kane FM in Guildford comes to mind) but their coverage is... pants. I know this is way off topic to the OP but with AM shutting down that mast in Vicars Lot might not get so excited by nearby Mooreside Edge anymore. Though it's probable the site may be gone and the FM relocated to a cellphone mast before Mooreside Edge goes away too. Honestly soon we'll be talking about the shutdown of FM analogue in the same way we're talking about AM shutdown. And everything will be a quasi national DAB+ service.
@@MarkWooldridge143I hope FM continues for decades, given the crap sound quality on DAB due to inadequate bit rates.
The high frequency of the RF coupled into the tower means it would give you a burn, but not a shock
I love the great music on this channel! So chill and nice to enjoy a good vid any time of the day or night... SO GOOD! Thank you!!
It is the same reason why switched-off high-voltage wires have voltage when a switched-on wire is close to this switched-off wire. You have to earth the switched-off wire, then it is really de-energised.
I grew up within 3 miles of Emley Moor, so all of this scenery is very familiar to me. That close to Emley Moor we could get teletext with no antenna connected, but getting a TV picture without ghosts was a nightmare.
You should consider making a detailed video or two on the Emley Moor tower! Not being from the UK, I was not aware of it, and suspect it's completely unknown to most in North America. It's an absolutely exceptional structure, and its looks are very imposing. I would have guessed such a thing belonged in the Soviet Union, not current day Great Britain. I see now you have some older videos visiting it. I suspect it's rather mundane to you. But being from the US, it's completely different from what I'm used to seeing, and really remarkable! At best you could compare it to the CN Tower in Toronto, or Space Needle in Seattle, which are tourist attractions, and designed very differently overall. The Emley Moor tower is definitely all business, and rather stark and brutal in its appearance! I don't think Americans are used to seeing all-concrete, purpose-built, freestanding radio towers. I appreciate all your videos.
The previous tower, which I visited on a public open day in about 1967, was a more conventional steel mast with guy cables. It collapsed in severe winter weather a few years later, because the weight of ice that formed overloaded the cables. So the transmitter that replaced it in 1971 was built on a much more imposing scale, and as you know it has stood the test of time.
I grew up looking over Moorside Edge each day. We called it Pole Hill, at least in my area of Halifax.
I've seen a video of a tool drop resulting in a cable snap and tower collapse, pretty amazing that this kind of electrocution hazard can be caused so far away. Thanks for your great and unique videos and content.
Lol what the hell did he drop? A boat anchor or what
@@NinoJoel It was a wrench, and yeah it was for 2" or 2.5" nuts. It fell several hundred feet before it hit the cable and it cut in enough to snap it. I'll try to find the video of it and reply back.
@@NinoJoel This is the closest I can find now and I think it may be where I saw the story originally. Maybe not :P
Frontline story on cell tower deaths ruclips.net/video/ue5fMQ9vZCU/видео.html
@@DoctorMangler dam the chances of hitting that steel wire are insanely low.
What an unlucky b@stard .
Reminds me of an accident in Poland where a worker accidentally took of a support cable while he was working on the tower resulting in a collapse and his death.
@@NinoJoel A mistake you make only once. I couldn't work on those towers.
I would be worried about RF burns too. As someone lucky enough to get an RF burn, they are no fun at all.
96.9 viking fm oh that's an old one from when I used to clog around in my old X reg fiesta it was a good station around Hull and Scunthorpe and grimsby. Cheers Lewis another great video
Excellent channel. It has opened up a whole new world to me.Thanks.
Glad to hear it!
wonderful, if you like classic gold, will you listen to the Easy listening mega pulse gold 2 network? or should i switch to Pulse hallam Yorkshire gold AM? Maybe I should just stick to the pro Gold late night mega share Gold Pulse 1 network! ....ha
enjoyable content as usual - love the camera work - well done!
Thanks for another interesting look at some AM medium wave transmitters. Thanks for the upload.
Thanks for your work love it. Very interesting see you on your next video Alan from LUTON 💯👍👍👍
Now that was interesting. Being a Tyke, I appreciate this particular content.
Just getting caught up with a few of your videos…excellent work as usual.
I found this very interesting, I worked at the Bradford studios in the late 80s and remember playing different jingles on Classic Gold on 1278 and 1530 I always wondered where the 1530 transmitter was located now I know
I don’t know a damn thing about radio, but I love watching this channel anyway! Very cool intersection of tech know-how and history!
Done a few surveys on Arqiva sites where there was a standard lattice tower (supporting cell equipment etc) in the same land as a MF mast or near a sloping wire. All of them were supervised by an engineer and when climbing would only be able to use a RF monitor that covered kHz range which the Nardalert S3 did but the cheaper ones used in the cellular industry don’t. Never seen anything untoward on the monitors on-site, but assume if winching up kit/steel it could be an issue.
Love it, keep it up bud
Nice presentation Lewis.👍🏻
Now I know how my local good buddies felt in the 1980's when I was Dxing with big big power lol
Great video my friend.
I knew exactly where you were from the first second! I've been up there and seen the warning sign about the induced voltage.
I have an aunt who’s like those sheep: she likes to sit under the communications tower because she thinks she’s getting smarter there
nice 1 lewis i live in the west country very much same here our mendip tv and radio transmitter is still going strong i am 25 miles from it. its a beast does all the dab radio too. many moons ago gb3 wr was there it was said they could receive gb3 wr in london thanks lewis 73 m3hnl
I'd be fascinated over what you could find out about the stations around Scarborough (Both Irton Moor GCHQ and the dishes - yep - dishes used to transmit TV signal to the town below).
Induction strikes again!
For me, it's interesting each country has its own FM antenna systems, here we still rely on V shaped dipoles with a reflector from Aldena. The antenna here used is forbidden in the Benelux.
What? They didn't try Classic Gold Death Metal? Great vid as always.
same with some scaffolding rigs. I worked on many film sets with massife scaffolding arrangments, before we earthed the towers down there was often a large mesurable differance to ground.
With so much kit been wireless thesedays, this problem is only getting worse.
Ive always said, earthing / grounding is such an under raited safty system.
You make the best videos thank you for ur content
Used to listen to Hallam / Hallam FM mainly in the car when driving around Rotheram/Sheffield in the late 1980s
Lewis, your channel is epic 😊
There's a wind turbine in the background close to the mast, would that have been installed to help power the transmitter (reducing the load on the DNO cables)?
Unless the masts happen to be fed from a completely separate supply I'd assume all of the grid-tied turbines up there would be contributing to the local network. I wouldn't have thought it installed for that specific purpose though - it's just a particularly favourable location for siting turbines.
I see this transmitter from my house and you are right even on a clear day it's barely visible
I'm another one who has received minor RF shocks during maintenance one has to be careful in high wattage areas.
Great detective work Lewis
an rf burn from that antenna would be quite nasty. at that high of power output, it could maybe kill you if you grounded yourself properly.
As always fascinating unique content ! Just longing for the day when all those high power transmitters are switched off for good certainly talksport or talkbore as I call it
Ye gads the weather's always desperate up on that moor. Looks like you caught it on a good day!
Even without the two adjacent towers you can still get a heft jolt from static - something that happened many years ago to me.
Great Video and Information' Super detailed! Thank you'
📡 /l\📻
This is why I like playing with radio frequencys
Blackley here.. enjoyed watching your video. 💯👍
My biggest FM is 100kw and biggest AM is 1kw. The latter is in the same building as the studios and the ground itself isn't great so I chase RF demons out things all the time. I have had equipment not connected to anything but a bit of wire I was removing and gotten a shock off it. That close pretty much anything is an antenna. If I am somewhat near the tuning coil I can make the curly lightbulbs light up in my hand. I sometimes have to remote in or drive out to lower power on my FM so climbers can go up near the bays. In the analog days my predecessor would get complaints and have to go to houses near the towers to add some filtering to a tv or hifi.
100k. Respect 🙏
When I saw the title I had a feeling it was about some kind of electrical stuff going on via RF
"Well, my radio tower is in the Domesday Book!"
Do you happen to know what the single guyed mast at Farlington is for? (Another Arquiva) Best I could find was local radio years ago, bit nothing current
Good job
another "big loop" parasitic "antenna" that can accidentally give you a "zap" if you are close to a high power MW (or shortwave) transmitter is big tower cranes.... big metal upright, long metal boom & metal cable going back down to the ground basically forms a big conductive receive loop so not a good idea to stand on the ground & grab the hook when it descends (always make sure there is a "shorting tail" hitting the ground before you grab anything (just like rescue chopper winch-men have a conductive tail before they touch anything on the ground).
Most People do not realize how RF works and be dangerous you can hold up a tube from a office light under a high voltage line and it will light up . We take a small tube and tape them to our radio antennas and light them when the mic is keyed .
I love the tune at the beginning…care to share who made it? 😊
I live about 3 miles from here ❤
Oops
@@nodriveasusephotos8019?
I once got a "nibble" from my FT290 accidentally keyed the mike with my finger across the so239😂
Huh how much power could I grab if I lived nearby? Like could it replace my standard electric if I just set up an antenna and some batteries?
Yes , the antenna is a transducer ! 👽⚡️
I remember seeing a video about the power of am tower transmitting power a few years back and it had construction guys maybe 1 mile or so maybe more I can't remember but they were using a crane or some thing and and the hook on it and another piece of metal was I think arcing and you were able to hear to station and I saw this video on youtube. One personal experience I had was when I was living in a house about 15 minutes from where I live now and there was a radio tower not that far away and I think it was an am tower possibly cause in the house especially at night I would hear voices coming through the hvac vents and I know it sounds crazy but I did hear them and I also searched pretty much the entire house for maybe a radio that was on but there was none to be found. did hear though that there was an am radio station in the next town which was Watertown Mn which was probably maybe 5 or 6 miles away but not sure.
Nice Lindenblad antennas for FM. Circular polarization.
Indeed! A thing of beauty
Would you consider doing a video on companies like arqiva? i saw their logo in your last video and thought nothing of it, but then walked past there office in london on my way home, and again here
Possibly, unfortunately arqiva aren’t very good at returning emails
100 Volts. I wonder how many ma or amps available and how many potential watts?
At about 03:25 in this video:
That FM station should use the slogan *_"LIVE AT LEEDS."_* 😉
*LONG LIVE ROCK!* 👍😊
How do you "switch off" a tower? I can see "switching off" the transmitter feeding an antenna on the tower, but I've never seen an on off switch on a tower.
How the hell do they stand upright at that height ?
They’re tethered to the ground
@@RingwayManchester yeah I get that my friend, but wow….. still how is so high? Helicopter’s or what?
@@tazmaniachill The masts are usually assembled in sections on the ground and each section is hoisted into position using a gin pole attached to the previous sections. When a new section is installed the gin pole is raised up onto the new section and the process is repeated until the mast is completed.
@@tazmaniachillthere's video of tower construction here on RUclips. It's scary to see 2 guys at the top of the completed part while a helicopter lowers the next 100 feet onto and the guys have to line it up.
I suppose they could give Vicars Lot to a lot of vicars… not likely, of course.
Do you do any dxing?
@RingwayManchester >>> Is that one single wind turbine a dedicated power source for the on-site equipment?
I told you Simon Jordan on talksport was dangerous...
Good story - Was it an AM site going back to wW2?
Like the military uses a gloved wand to discharge static from fighter canopies, maybe they could use this approach before starting work on the antenna.
Would probably not work, because there will easily be RF voltage peaks and troughs along the height of the tower, even if you ground the base.
@FUL0H8, Once the airplane canopy is discharged, whoever touches it is free from shocks until it charges up again, most likely from flying. The radio station antenna mast is different, it is constantly receiving RF energy from the other station's transmitter, it's not something that could be discharged.
Pennine Hallam & Viking!!!
FM coverage is all about height above average terrain, taller is better. Nice location, imagine a 4 or 500 M tower in the middle of a housing estate. Consultants make a tidy sum keeping sites legal.
The death of true local radio overseen and allowed by OFCOM such a tragedy.
More a problem of next to nobody listening to it any more meaning they can't get advertising revenue for private stations
only traffic and weather as they said :( @@gherkinisgreat
I miss Dearne FM.
I remember my trips to the transmitter when I worked in radio. It wasn't as impressive as this
Local radio ? RIP.