What Do All These Strange Radio Antennas Do?
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- Опубликовано: 16 окт 2022
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You are quite right, the corrugated area near the top of the mast is a weather shelter so that technicians working on the mast can shelter if bad weather comes in when they are up the mast. Also it allows staff to take a break out of the wind (which is vicious!) instead of going back to ground level. Incidentally, access up the mast is usually provided by a metal "basket" hauled up by a wire on a ground winch. Some unfortunate person has to climb up the ladder initially taking a rope to haul up the wire so the winch can be rigged up for use during the maintenance project. Climbing vertically takes good fitness! Ice is a big problem here. In the 1980s there was a severe icing episode (on the old mast which was later replaced). The ice was so thick that the guy wires could be clearly seen from down in Holmfirth. Unfortunately a sudden thaw in the weather caused tons of ice to slough off the guys which smashed into the building below. However, luckily it only damaged the standby generator plant and services kept going fed from the mains supply. Since then the building roof has been strengthened to give some protection from ice. You may notice some "knobbly" things on the guy wires. These are "helical strakes" made from plastic to stop an effect called vortex shedding which caused the guys to "gallop" or vibrate under certain steady wind conditions. It was quite frightening to see the guys whipping around and the associated movement of the mast under these conditions! Someone asked about "monitoring" - well at one time Holme Moss was a manned site that supervised the operation of all the BBC transmitters in Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Lincolnshire and part of Lancashire. Antennas were aimed at the various transmitters, which were unmanned, so that staff could listen to (or watch for TV) what was being broadcast. This supplemented the automatic monitoring equipment which reported faults, usually over telephone lines back to Holme Moss. Thanks for documenting your trip to HM - bought back happy memories from last century! Pretty much everything you talked about was accurate, by the way!
Really interesting info thank you!
Peter, what an excellent and insightful response. Many thanks!
Got me thinking about that corrugated breakout shelter up there though... Did you leave a little gas stove up there, or take a thermos? No technician should ever be without a brew (especially in poor weather). 😂
Thanks again, Mark.
@@m0wms I think probably a thermos and some sandwiches! I must admit I only ever took one trip up in "the cage" or basket on a relatively mild summer's day. But it scared me stiff so I just stayed in the cage admiring the fantastic view while the technicians/engineer jumped across the 2 foot gap to get onto the mast platform to do their work. The cage hung from a sloping wire on a pulley while it was pulled up by the winch wire which ran to just above the landing platform then down the middle of the mast to the winch on the ground. When you start off, the cage is perhaps 30m away from the mast and as you rise it gets closer to the mast, but never quite reaches it - hence the gap you have to swing across! One of the more demanding tasks is to apply grease to the stays or guy wires. The cage is rigged to run parallel to the guy and a rigger applies copious dollops of grease using his hands. The grease helps to reduce corrosion of the steel wires.
@@peterlee2622 Really interesting first hand accounts, thanks for your reply Peter. This is why I hardly watch TV these days and just give my time and attention to excellent RUclips channels such as this, along with the constructive and interesting comments.
Thanks for sharing
A Navy Captain called my office one day and asked for any failed and weird antennas we had to install on his building. His idea was that the decoy antennas would keep the Soviets guessing at what all those antennas were about amongst the real ones.
Must've looked quite a sight.
@@warmstrong5612 It was and still is.
Videos like this are how I fall down internet rabbit holes. I ended up on the Alan Dick website trying to find out how much it would cost to buy a TV broadcast antenna.
This reminds me of my time in Spain. I serviced some local radio stations who managed to get a rack space at a side where radio Nacional España had its transmitters. it was a site up a mountain top near Benidorm. You needed to remove any jewelry before entering the building. And the hairs on your arms went straight up when you did enter. One transmitter was 250kw I was told. It had several transmitters at that site. The tower was not that high, but it was packed with antennas in every direction. It also had its own generator as one transmitter was the emergency transmitter for Spain. The diesel fuel tank was made in a hole of the mountain and very large. Yes I do love this type of content. Keep this up. Great video.
As a long time broadcast technician in the states I found this very interesting and similar to our antenna arrangements on master towers.
Indeed! I just found this video after another US engineer pointed to it from seeing a video where my Dad (current radio engineer) and I (total beginner at RF) toured the inside of a similar style tower site in the US.
@@JeffGeerling oh, it's you! Your video with your father was wonderful! It then led me here and now I'm watching all these!
This is the kind of content I find fascinating, I would love to see the transmitters and link equipment inside the bunkers. Great work Lewis I appreciate the time and effort that you put in to create these wonderful video's 👍
I haven't seen your videos before, but as someone who works in the field of RF it's awesome to have videos like this to spread some light over things that aren't commonly understood in a way which is simple and makes sense. Thanks!
I'm a simple man; I see a Ringway antenna video, I click.
Brilliant work Lewis. I was born in Lincoln and became very used to the Belmont site when travelling to the coast, strangely enough - I now live on the Norfolk Coast at Hunstanton and on a clear night I can see the lights of Belmont just across The Wash on the Lincolnshire Wolds and where I live, unless you use Sky - the Freeview signals come from Belmont. Interesting to see the Airwave stuff on the site. Back in the days when you could listen to the police signals on VHF and UHF (not that I did of course!) I tracked down most if not all of their repeater sites in Lincolnshire. Ahhh those days were fun.
Fascinating info such a huge antenna
It is amazing how many different services are broadcast from a site. I have seen the antennas on the former World Trade Center in Manhattan, going to the observatory roof
there before 9/11 in October 1981. Also
been to the antenna site at West Peak near
Meriden, Connecticut, for some of the FM Hartford CT area stations, at over 1000 feet
above sea level, and finally the antenna site for Montreal Quebec, on Mont Royal site, above the city in 2008. Ray W2CH.
I remember being on the observation deck of the World Trade Center long ago, and I was amazed at how big that radio mast was on the opposite tower.
@@RCAvhstape another big array is the one on sears tower chicago.
@@RCAvhstape I once saw WNYW Ch. 5 from the WTC, at my house 1000 miles away, during strong skip. It was a year or so before the towers fell.
You're feeding my inner broadcasting geek. Nice video, Lewis! More like this please.
I very much enjoyed this video. Please do more. I went to a local mast @ West Hoathley which carried all sorts of strange antennas including TETRA , took some pictures and the police were called! Have you ever tried explaining yourself to a brain dead non technical police woman who thinks Facebook has its own aerials? I have!
A friend (a former GPO/BT tech based at Telco Tower London) says that the Mini Tower at Heaton Park was part of the Backbone and Secondary for broadcast. Perhaps you might look into this. Great content, you can of course assume more content like this, would be most welcome.
More please, Lewis. You are the tower structure to my crossed dipole antenna.
A Jago Hazzard fan, I assume?
@@arthurvasey I *might* be ;)
I was thinking the same, love Jago!
@@RingwayManchester Funny how we all seem attracted to similar channels even though they are often different fields of interest 👍😊
Great video!
Old antennas may simply be left on the tower because it's often too much effort and potentially cost to remove them, especially depending on where they are and whether any services have to be disrupted to get at them - e.g. you won't just turn off a major TV station so some riggers can climb past a DAB or digital TV antenna array to remove an antenna thats no longer being used (and this is more complicated now that antennas are transmitting multiplexes of multiple stations all at once...)
Additionally, the company that once may have operated them may have gone bust, and the tower owner probably isn't going to make the effort/expense to remove the antennas either.
That's all if it hasn't simply been forgotten about during upgrades, migrations, company mergers, etc.
Risk vs reward…
I've worked in so many places (not broadcast) where stuff gets left behind like this, because ... what is it? What does it do? Who is responsible for it? Nobody knows. Lest it be important to somebody, though, don't touch it.
The craziest example I've seen of this, though, was at a telco CO. There was a rack with a full rack-width hard drive ... ONE hard drive ... the width of a rack, and about 8U tall ... still powered on! That thing probably failed in the late 80s, but it's still there, because .. "Not my job" or "I don't wanna be the guy that broke something to do something that didn't need to be done."
@@nickwallette6201 in IT we sometimes do so called "scream tests". We disconnect the network from a server we don't know if still used and we wait for a user to scream...
@@DjAle1 That's probably good practice anyway. See, if your IT infrastructure is _too_ reliable, nobody knows what you do.
To see Holme Moss defying the elements on a bleak day is a wonderful sight to behold. Loved this and your pirate radio videos. More please. I love broadcast related stuff like this. 😁
I have to agree, the fact that such a massive, and probably very heavy bit of kit can stand there and not blow over, makes it just as impressive as the aerials!
anybody know how much the structure weighs?…
Thanks Lewis. Brought back loads of memories of my time on student placement at Alan Dick & Co in the late 80's. Working on those high power broadcast combining units, feeders and antenna arrays was something else.
Oh my goodness... Had to do a double take on the callsign there Gareth 😂
@@m0wms Mine's a double whisky and soda Mark :-)
Alan dick brings Back memories when Alan joined us as a engineer with j l eves when we built the t v mast at much markle and the mast near great torrington in n.devon in the late sixties .
Brilliant breakdown of services and aerials, Lewis. Much appreciated!
Hi Lewis, I did something similar when I worked in a hi fi shop in Liverpool town centre called Hardman radio, not for tv but for broadcast VHF radio. I put a 4 element Yagi on the roof and a 3 element Yagi in the back of the shop with a wide band
Labgear preamp in between the 2 antennas, this worked really well as the shop was about 60 foot long, so the FM reception was brilliant it also really helped to sell transistor radios as the customers where amazed just how good the cheap radios worked in the middle of the town centre.
See you soon
Dave. 😀
Great episode! Yes, please more of this type of content!
I’m in the U.S. , but I really enjoy your channel, and this episode is definitely one I found very interesting!
Thanks for the great work you do and the extremely interesting content!!
Awesome video Lewis! Definitely like to see more antenna arrays.
Really enjoyed looking at this amazing structure.
Interesting to see the damage inflicted by a wayward ice chunk on that microwave antenna.
This was an interesting video of this transmitter site. Brilliant work. I am an Armature Radio operator in the U. S. Always nice to see other transmitting equipment in different parts of the world.
Absolutely love this type of content. Keep up the great work :)
Another quality video Lewis and explanation of different antennas,look forward to more of these videos thank you.
I find this kind of content - giving us new eyes for the things around us - very satisfying to watch. Subscribed.
Great video - went up there yesterday (fantastic weather but icy!) and really appreciate the rundown of the equipment and purposes.
Brilliant video Lewis, very interesting and informative. I had the opportunity to go up the Mendip Mast (Pen Hill, Somerset) near me many years ago and was fascinated by all the equipment, would love to visit more of these installations.
That's one very busy mast! So much good content in this video. I can't imagine how long it took to compile it. Well done, sir!
Haskell - W5HLM New Braunfels, Texas
Whomever it was that designed and constructed the anchoring did a damn fine job of it, and whomever performs the structural maintenance also "means business", as evidenced by the thoroughness of the application of the gunship grey paint, and the fact that absolutely no rust is visible, nor are any other signs of corrosion evident. At those heights/'altitudes', actually, one often sees streaks of rust, or other signs of corrosion, and that tower is pristine! Cheers!, and thanks for the upload!
Yes, when I worked there, the mast was painted I think about every 6 or 7 years. They used to use the same paint as on the Forth Rail Bridge, but these days it may be an epoxy based one. I remember at another site, we had 6 tons of paint delivered to put 3 coats on 4 tall towers. I was told that only about 1.5 tons would remain on the metalwork, the rest was solvent which would evaporate into the atmosphere! The paint is water-based these days so most of what evaporates is just H2O. When these masts are painted, the staff have to park their cars away from the building, otherwise they are likely to get spattered with paint that is impossible to remove without damaging the car's finish. (I know from experience!) The paint has a careful amount of thinner added to make it easier to apply, but not too much to cause the coat to be too thin. This is checked by microscope to make sure adequate thickness is applied. Painting is one of the more dangerous maintenance jobs because they have to get to all the nooks and crannies of the steelwork. This involves swinging down on bosun's chairs with a kettle of paint hanging from their belt and a long-handled brush in hand. Naturally, the adjacent antennas are powered down while they are working. I remember one painter asked if a large 1.5m diameter microwave dish was powered off for him to work in front of. He took some convincing that it was used for receive only and so the power was in the nanowatts or less! The guys or stay wires are regularly greased as well to prevent corrosion. Luckily, Holme Moss is well inland, probably 100 miles from the sea, so salt water corrosion is not a problem. Some transmittere sites near the coast are not that lucky.
Has been something I've seen as long as I can remember living in South Manchester
Really interesting Lewis thanks for sharing and plese keep the intesting content coming 👍
You follow my line of thinking. Very enjoyable and very informative, 2nd viewing now to catch the detail. PS love all of your output. Thank you
Nicely done aa usual! You must put a lot of time into research and I'm sure your fans here are as grateful as me.
Most interesting video of late Lewis
Very informative yet again Lewis. Definitely one of my favourite channels.
Great video Lewis! When you are in Holmfirth they say if you can’t see the mast then you know it’s raining. If you can see it you know it will start raining soon 😂
Fascinating - I work in telecoms so recognise some of the cellular and microwave links, I also had a stint doing student radio at uni so dabbled with a short range microwave link and the associated FM transmitter, but all of this gear is on another level - I'd hate to have to climb that mast though :D
Amazing rog! This is why you are my goto when I see an antenna and want to know what it is!
VERY precise explanations!! Wow! I thought you said, "falling guys (supporting cables)". Your British accent meant "ice". 😊
Great Video Lewis. Thanks. I can confirm the necessity of the shelter having been stuck near the top of a tower crane during a sudden thunderstorm. Hanging on for dear life in freezing rain and high winds is not fun.
Plenty going on up on thoughs masts.
Such a variety indeed.
Towards the end I was getting the feeling of vertigo!
Thanks for the info Lewis 🙂👍
SIMPLY OUTSTANDING I love them and only know the basics so get a grasp of some the other shapes we sup there is super. Great footage.
My ex-wife's uncle overheard me asking about the "what are those Golf ball looking globes at RAF Boulmer" He worked for Serco security on the base and got me in to look at the A/C as a visitor.A HUGE American soldier let us in and we descended to a Bunker that was in near darkness. Had a strange smell but he said because it has It's own air from above ground. We looked In a room that was dated, looked like the set of War Games the movie. Led ticker was showing a message but I wont say on here. I was told It was last used during the cold war but the messages on the screen was IRA related. Facinating experience, never forget it.
yes 2 mega watts
when i went north yorks railway
my video camera went wild
got caught in the radio stream
also i could feel it warm on my face
that was from the railway carriage/
Thanks, Lewis this is most interesting. I never visited the mast but I remember when it opened as a TV transmitter. It was a bit thing those days as this was the third TV station in England and a special program went to air.
Where I lived as I do now we picked up TV from the Hints transmitter near Sutton Coldfield. would love you to cover this. Thanks, Robert...
Most of the info went over my head but I still found it really interesting, thanks Lewis! Hmm, the corrugated section, perhaps some secret military surveillance antennas? 😊
I'd love to see a video on the RBS structure and maybe incorporate the RBS test!
Love your work making broadcast technology accessible and understandable.
Love your channel! Thank you for your very informative videos!
I remember jumping off Winter Hill attached to a hang glider in the late 80s. It was mostly foggy on and off.
Love the geeky side of anything electrical, keep 'em coming!
Always a great video. I love this type of content.
Really interesting video. Had no idea there were so many different services on one tower.
Have you made any videos about how all of the services are managed at one site ? Or is that impossible due to security etc. ?
Great episode 👍
NOT long winded at ALL! Very interesting and great detail! Thank you.
Fantastic level of detail. Certainly a lot on one mast. Yes, absolutely, more of this type of stuff please.
73 M7TUD
Great video! Really enjoyed it. Would love to see more of it; also in different countries (like the Turkey episode). 73
Videos like this are awesome, not long winded at all! For those of us not in the UK, maybe a video explaining how all the networks work together? You were using another name for a network I have no idea what it was, sounded like a company name. Does everywhere get BBC 1,2,3, etc but only Wales get the BBC Wales station? Those kinds of things.
Short version is that the entire UK gets the "national services", which consist of BBC R1, 2, 3 & 4 (on FM), plus 5 on MW and a few extras on DAB. These are transmitted from sites all over the UK, which are fed from London via a NICAM link. In addition, the UK is divided into "regions" with their own "local radio" station, BBC Essex, Southern Counties, or whatever. These are usually only transmitted from one or two sites to cover the smaller area.
Love your informative videos, and think its wonderful thst you can discuss what the equipmemt does rather thsn just show random pictures , while talkimg about this numbers station or thst oddity
Very interesting - yes please do make more! The thing at the top of the mast, I think is a radar reflector, for aircraft.
Really nice video on what all these antennas do. Really, I thought it was like a two minute video when in fact it was 10 minutes, very informative very interesting thank you.
I had no idea I was interested in antennas until I watched this video! Thanks mate 😉
I really loved this video. I've often wondered how the TV broadcast and radio broadcast done in the UK. I use to live there at RAF Bentwaters in the early 1990's.
Great video, as are the pirate radio ones. Extra good viewing lately. Cheers Lewis.
Even though I’m “across the pond” in the USA, I’m very interested in any video you post. Doesn’t matter the subject. I especially like any commercial equipment along with Amateur Radio as I’m a ham too. (N6FRW). Thanks for all your videos.
Very interesting video - thanks for posting. I did find all the defocus transitions a bit distracting but it was fascinating content all the same. Thanks!
Yes, more content like this please. It’s fascinating
Really informative video and reaches out to more people as we all see these site and wonder what’s what.
Very interesting and informative... more videos like this would be greatly appreciated.
Really enjoyed that Lewis. Its the sort of thing I've been doing for many years.
Military sites are a curiosity to me mainly. But any antenna and I want to have a look.
Excellent content thanks for sharing your thoughts 👍I am a aerial rigger so I understand everything you went through.
Great video! I love this kind of content and would love to see more!
I really enjoyed your presentation. Keep up the good work Thanks
Thank you that was very interesting. Yes I certainly would like to see more videos like this.
excellent work Lewis, very interesting. I love in the north east and I'm fascinated with my local mast, pontop pike. do you think you'll be able to do a video on all the antennas on that? keep up the great work as always!
Thank you for being instructive.
Interesting stuff, as always. Keep them coming!
Excellent video Lewis 😀 . It reminds me of when I used watch BBC and IBA Engineering broadcasts to the trade in the 1980s when off school . Always fascinating stuff - thanks.
Iba broadcast
Yeah tuesdays ch 4 if i remember
Remember them well. That monotone voice telling us that winter hill will be on low power this afternoon on all services while brierley hill will be qrp for fm services only. Lol.
@@vw663 Yes, better than watching Test Card F all morning. The IBA Archive on RUclips brings back memories of these broadcasts.
@@lukedavid4393 Thanks @Luke David, wasn’t aware. I’ll take a look. 😀
Yes sir I’m in America and I think this is very informative so go for it
Great information video and great comments. Thanks
Thanks, great video, would like to see more of this kind.
Fascinating! Great work.
I've hung a few of these in my day elsewhere. I wrote up a large comment on what stuff probably was, then started listening to you and you were really really close to being perfectly spot on so erased it. 5:56 I think that dark gray radio might actually be an internet access point for whatever reason (edit - i think its 900mhz if memory serves but ill check what i have if you reply asking me too) and they just decided to use the existing standoff arm instead of adding a new mounting arm. I suspect that it is being fed off one of the ubiquity internet radios because I only see 1 cable feed running into it (and its shadow), and no RRU, and I've got a few identical too it in my garage. 9:19 I can tell you likely know this already but those are fiberglass panels because it doesn't interfere with RF, and I'd wager once upon a time a cellular carrier was there, I've seen this exact approach in the past to shield the stuff from sheer force damages where you need something basically pressure rated to withstand the rain+wind forces that the equipment isn't rated for, saving BIG bucks by not needing specialized housings to keep hurricane gusts from pushing water into the radios by force. From what I can see, there are no indicators anything is behind them. I do see 2 electrical conduits running past it, so we cant completely rule out that there isn't something up there that doesn't need ground wires and its just a hidden relay that only needs AC to operate with the job of taking a signal from one side, and sending it out to another dish(s) with it's own self contained systems up top so no need for a ground interface and It might just basically be a tucked away OSPF relay; who knows. The only issue I see is if its not in use, then it's a ton of unnecessary wind loading at the top, and it really should be taken down. I'm very curious now what you do for a living. ~Cheers
Hello from the Stockport area. Great video, fascinating!
Good video, I live fairly local Barnsley actually, always wondered what all the bits were.😁
that corrugated metal structure could be a shelter for elevator equipment (motors and control systems). Some of those taller towers have personnel elevators built in the interior of the tower.
Great vid! I work for Arqiva and could confirm everything if I was allowed. You'd probs like a trip up to viewing platform at Emley? And up there I tell you the ice can be a problem. I was at the office when ice fell from the guys, quite scary
I have some photos you might like I took from one of the Arqiva auctions where I brought quite a few of the TXs recently used as part of the switch over project, and we had to remove them from the racks ourselves. So lots of RF kit.
I now have a spare room full of TXs from Emley Moor and not exactly sure why I grabbed them but seemed too good an opportunity to let them pass 🤣.
Would love to see pics Adam! Ringwaymanchester@mail.com
Very, very interesting thank you. Would love similar videos about other larger masts and main transmitters. I’m also interested in the standalone microwave links and their locations.
Like others have said. Thank you for making these videos, I can now bore my passengers as I drive past these antennas. I would love to see whats inside the cabins around the base of these aerials, hopfully someone might be able to get you inside.
Am sure we used to drive to one, near Sheffield passed snakes pass , I was young back then the driver dave said they was TV but its beyond me
Please do more of this material, I'm an antenna geek and always looking up when out and about to see what wire or metal is in the air :) It's fascinating to see what is used in all of these varied comm's links. 73 G7KDM :)
Very interesting, thanks. You should write a Kindle book on Antenna Spotting 😁
I stay within minutes of 3 major masts and stations and a microwave backbone site. They have always fascinated me. After learning more about the backbone network from your channel and studying the tower it’s become a shadow of its former self. There is hardly a dish on it now, it looked like a giant minion when I was younger with its two giant microwave dishes!! There was also an MOD site with a tower too but that was rubbed out a few years ago, and returned to nature. How technology moves on.
Scary what has replaced it.
Thoroughly enjoyed🎉 something more technical and interesting. Beats the pirate radio stuff hands down. Maybe you would consider doing similar for different types of masts.
Excellent explanation! Thank you.
Great video Lewis!
Please visit more broadcast sites like this as they are really interesting.
There are also some aircraft comms sites around Manchester Airport and Manchester City airfield that are worth a visit.
Hey mate let me know where they are.
@@RingwayManchester I don't know the addresses off the top of my head but some include opposite the flying horse pub M22 5LT and Hobcroft Lane WA16 7QR.
More can be seen on satellite View.
Are you sure? Cause I did some research on all these sites and all of them were gone.
Loved it! More please!
Very interesting Lewis as always. More of the same please. Love it
Fascinating. I wish you could do this in my country
Interesting to learn about the aerials up the mast. I like learning about microwave transmission. More please when time allows.
Fascinating thanks for making the video 👍
Unlike some commenters I enjoy your other content a great deal - but I also enjoyed this video a lot! Even details you probably wouldn't consider - I live in Florida and "falling ice" isn't something I ever would have considered!
Paul, Look up what happened to the first tower at Elmley Moor - I'd suggest covering it but there's already a few videos out there so I don't know if it's a priority job.
You should ask around and see if you can get a tour of the rf equipment inside the buildings. Would be cool to see.