Droitwich: The Death Of The 1/2 Million Watt Transmitter 

As an American who is a fan of this channel, but has never seen this behemoth lumbering over the M5 - I must say that "It actually sits in Dodderhill - just outside the village of Wychbold - near Droitwitch in Worcestershire." is among the more English sentences I have ever heard. 😀

Droitwich, AKA "Dump-wich" by the BBC employees that were sentenced...I mean, posted there. The 4th diesel-gen set failed in service & blew a massive hole in its crankcase at some stage. Starting up those diesels was an amazing ritual, not many people know that you got those massive engines into the starting position BY HAND! You opened the exhaust valves, lifted a small door over the flywheel, stuck a long metal bar into it & used the notches in the flywheel rim until a white square showed. Then you had to remember to close the exhaust valve lifters. Starting was done with compressed air & it was an amazing experience bringing them to life, up to speed & then synchronize them to the incoming HV feeders before closing the breakers. It was a technique called "Transfer On Power" & it meant you didn't have to run the site down & run it back up again to test the diesels. RF Field strength was so high that you couldn't turn the lights off! Two screwdrivers held tip to tip would make very small arcs that you could see if you actually could find somewhere pitch black & modern cars that drove up to the entrance might die when the engine management unit was flooded with RF! The Ariel Tuning Hut (ATH) was a minefield for new employees, there was a UV detector inside that'd drop carrier from the 500Kw 198Khz TX if it saw a flashover & the older employees would place the earthing wand precisely so that, when you opened the door to step into the ATH, the earthing wand would get knocked & it'd hit a metal stud & causing a pretty fat flash which because of the detector, would trip the Long Waver off for a fraction. I suppose that they thought it was funny, somehow. As for the Long Wave PA valves being in short supply....well there'd be at least another 2 in storage if they'd been handled right. Those shiny metal rings were NOT handles, they were anti flashover rings (to prevent internal flash overs which were destructive) & if you lifted the very heavy valve by the ring you might only find half of it in your hands while the other half crashed to the floor.....not me, I should add. And finally, it was a fun place to be in a thunderstorm. Very good for topping up your tan, you might say.

Damn. Never thought I'd live to be old enough to see the end of longwave... Sad days, beyond just nostalgia. The ability to make a receiver out of a handful of components and no battery... and to be able to hear across the world.... priceless.

As a former broadcast engineer, you don't know how badly I wish I had a time machine and could visit this site in its heyday. THANK YOU for this wonderful video. There was so much art, pride and amazing engineering back in the day! 73

Ah! Great nostalgia here, having spent my career in high power transmitters with the BBC including some work involving Droitwich. Some more facts about the site: the two 700ft high masts are steel but not galvanized so have relied on regular painting to protect them from corrosion. The fact that they are still standing after over 90 years is a testament to the "Forth Bridge" painting regime used! A common problem was flashover or corona arcing across the stay insulators on the long wave mast. This was typically initiated by nearby (or direct) lightning strikes. Once the arcing started, it would continue, aided by the high RF voltages. If allowed to continue, it could destroy the insulator, which then required a costly repair. When the site was staffed, a technician on the control desk would have a cheap MF radio tuned to a quiet frequency on all the time. If he started to hear modulated noise bursts, it was an indication that arcing was occurring, so he pressed the "HT suppress" button to briefly turn off the mercury arc rectifiers providing the 11kV dc anode supply to the final amplifiers. This would remove the RF which was sustaining the arcing. In the 1980s the BBC did away with the local staff, opting to run the station unmanned but monitored from afar. A solution was needed to protect against stay insulator arcing. A system using ultra violet detectors was installed, as the arcing produced large amounts of UV. Three detectors were arranged round the site and at least 2 of them needed to detect UV for it to generate a transmitter trip. Why 3 detectors? Well, initial tests were promising, using just one detector. But trips occurred for no apparent reason. It was then noticed that somebody was doing some car welding off site on the other side of the main road and the arc welder produced enough UV to trip the transmitter! Subsequently, UV detectors were used in all the high power MF and LF transmitter sites. They were also put inside the antenna tuning huts at the base of the antennas. These were very sensitive - just lighting a match inside the building would trigger the detector: yes, open flames emit a lot of UV!

Interesting to see how this decision pans out in the long run. Wouldn't surprise me to see it being another example of "knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing".

As an R/O in the merchant navy years ago picking up the long wave signal on a communications receiver was always a good sign that we were on the way home, even though we were miles away!

The benefit of a LW transmitter is that you only need a long length of wire, a variable capacitor, a diode and a earpiece and you have a receiver - and no batteries needed.

Fantastic that you've covered this. It's amazing that it's carried on for so long. This used to be rather local to me, and I can remember those original BBC gates. The nearby garden centre had to have filters fitted to their telephone system as they wearing hearing the radio transmissions. The place really should be turned into a museum. So much history.

I’m ancient enough to have used 200kHz as a lab frequency standard in the mid 80’s and then after the frequency change in 1988 we bought an updated converter suitable for 198kHz, both were sourced from Quartzlock. Never thought LW would ever end.

BBC 4 on 198 kHz can be received here in Toronto (about 6000 km away at night), it shows how far LW signals can travel, it will be a sad day when it goes off the air.

I occasionally use my mother's 1960 Bush radio to listen into long wave. I turned it on one afternoon, about this time last year, and heard the national anthem being played and stopped in my tracks and looked at it, as that's normally a 00:58 daily event on Radio 4 Then it announced the death of The Queen Moments in history on many levels

As a trainee transmission engineer for the BBC early 1990’s, I got to see the LW transmission hall with the massive valves: thick braided wire carrying high current to valves that were ?1m tall.

We didn't have LW in the US; the band is used for aircraft beacons but that had it's own attraction to roam around in. It is immensely sad but all simple radio is dying, local and long distance. It's all going computerized to cram as much as is possible into the smallest possible spectrum space. My boyhood dreams of being old and retired while enjoying radio have been smashed, and part of my soul has died with it. RIP Droitwich

Fun fact.... it is believed that the Royal Navy nuclear deterrent submarines used to check if Radio 4 was still on the air as part the process of checking if the country had been attacked by nuclear weapons

This is an interesting video for me. As a boy in the 1950s I remember being taken to BBC open days at the Wychbold transmitter site. They were very popular and I remember crowds of folks and queues to get in. There were neatly-kept flower beds and lawns alongside the driveway up to the main building. Inside I remember lots of varnished wood and polished brass. I remember being told that the long wave transmitter was the most powerful in the world so that it could broadcast the shipping forecast to ships at sea.

Thanks for this Ringway. The transmitting hall was a design icon of 1930's Art Deco. I wonder how noisy it was. And getting rid of long wave is a huge mistake.

John Reath (first Director General of the BBC left the corporation in 1938. Droitwich was his last stop. Below courtesy of Wikipedia... "He left Broadcasting House with no ceremony (at his request) but in tears. That evening, he attended a dinner party before driving out to Droitwich to close down a transmitter personally. He signed the visitor's book "J.C.W. Reith, late BBC." "

I remember the frequency changes in 1978. 23 November 1978. Stickers were isued with The Radio Times that you could stick on your radio dial to show you where the stations were. I remember my dad sticking them on the kitchen transistor radio. It was quite a big event. It shall be a sad day when 198KHz falls silent. Thanks for very nice video. Very good potted history and some nice pictures.

I have a 1950 or 51 Phillips radio set that has Droitwich's long wave wavelength marked on it's scale. That radio is older than my parents. I wonder if future generations would understand what the words "Kalundbg.", "Droitw." used to mean. Might be like ancient hieroglyphs to them.

In those days a lot of attention was paid to the decoration of the buildings... This weekend I visited the old transmitter building of the Dutch mediumwave in Lopikerkapel. Its inside looks very much like what you have shown. Initially the transmitters were placed much like in those photographs, but at some point they were replaced by new ones that were in a corner of the basement, and the hall was repurposed as a company cafetaria. And a new transmitter building was later built in the Flevopolder. That one already has been demolished, the old one remains as a monument and is now repurposed as small offices. There is also the old longwave building in Radio Kootwijk, with an even nicer transmitter hall that looks like a cathedral. It was not for broadcast but rather for telegram and later telephone traffic. We never had an operational longwave broadcast transmitter, although there is an allocated frequency and (unrealistic) plans have been made in the past.

Thanks Lewis, very interesting. I love the black and white interior photos. Clean industrial design, very heavy duty, built to last. I don't know about the UK but here in the US it seems things aren't really made like that anymore.

I remember as a child being driven through Droitwich on many occasions in the 1970s and 1980s, there used to be loads of buildings that were gradually sinking into the ground due to old salt mines that I became fascinated in as well as the masts. The signal from the transmitters was so strong when you got close it would totally overwhelm the car radio whatever station you were listening to into a loud muffle of noise. These masts have been a key landmark and Droitwich which will never ever be the same if they are eventually removed.

Back in the mid 60s and early 70s when I was a young apprentice at the Marconi company in Chelmsford, Essex, I worked for a while in the transmitter development lab, and we had large transmitting valves for a development transmitter we were working on, the valve holders looked like toilet pans with concentric rings of phosphor bronze contacts. and large copper busbars for the heater voltages. There was a water inlet at one side to water cool the valves as they had a large copper anode at the bottom which sat in the water flow.

Brilliant Lewis!! 73 can often hear Radio 4 on 198 kHz here in Nova Scotia

Switching this off is a mistake. We may need this frequency available in future emergencies. A parallel mistake is the switching off of the UK copper phone lines: as far as I can see, nobody seems to care that the 999/112 service will not be available during a power cut. Excellent video, as usual 👍

I worked as a telephone engineer in the Droitwich area ( though not actually in Wychbold) and RFI complaints were frequent . The southern edge of the town was a multiple of 198metres from Wychbold and sometime simply moving a phone a few feet would cure the problem. Having doen that it would be time to get out the various chokes etc for a more permanet fix. Apocryphal stories of 'wireless' florescent tubes and musical ovens abounded in Wychbold .

Long wave, real radio. Definitely the end of a glorious era in radio.

Another memory of high power MF/LF transmission. The Moorside Edge transmitter near Huddersfield was rebuilt in the 1980s, including new antenna tuning huts with the matching equipment in. The spec given to the building contractor was that no steel or iron nails were to be used in the roof woodwork, but only brass ones. The carpenter thought that no one would notice if he used the cheaper steel nails. Unfortunately, he found out otherwise when the roof caught fire when the transmitter was turned on!

I like how they made the interior architecture stylish to ape the period design of the Art Deco era: curved chrome handrails topped with black Bakelite. It’s a pity to close it down, maybe it could be turned into a museum?

I don't think you realize quite how good it's coverage is. I listen to BBC Radio 4 LW almost every night, though it's slightly noisy, and I'm yet to find any radio too weak so it can't receive the medium wave frequencies of Droitwich during the night, the thing is that this is in Austria.

Been past this site a few times. Always been facinated by LW and MW transmission equipment. Fond memories of both Radio 4 and Radio 1 as a child. 1053kHz is burned into my brain. Loved the old pictures of the equipment. The hypnotic glow of a mercury arc rectifier is such a visual treat, would loved to have seen that pair in operation 🤗

The loss of longwave and medium wave will be a terrible blow to the UK. I heard Radio 4 on 198 as far south ad Wiesbaden, Germany. 😥😥

I love the Art Deco architecture of the transmitter building, I hope it gets preserved if the site ever closes.

Next step is the switch off of FM transmitters. When a war breaks out, and internet breaks down, people will be sitting around CB and radio amateur devices.

The BBC had a long tradition of manufacturing its own transmitter valves - water cooled behemoths capable of dissipating metal-melting temperatures with little expansion of the glass envelope and very high anode/plate voltages without insulation breakdown or flashover. In the US, most transmitter valves were made by RCA (or GE) which kinda shows the different relations between broadcaster, government and individual listener in the two countries.

Also Lewis From September 1988, Radio 1 began its FM switch-on, with further major transmitter switch-ons in 1989 and 1990. It was not until the mid-1990s that all existing BBC radio transmitters had Radio 1 added. Previously, Radio 1 had "borrowed" Radio 2's VHF/FM frequencies for around 25 hours each week. So Radio 1 went FM in the late 1980's

Wonderful video, Lewis! So sad to see all these broadcast stations leaving long wave, as it was when the Beeb's World Service ceased most of its short wave transmissions back in the noughties. I had no idea about those rare glass valves! But it makes so much sense. It's strange sometimes when new technologies, which can make some things easier and less expensive, also result in rendering older technologies, some of which are actually far more robust, essentially obsolete. I suppose I attempt to counter this in my own small way by continuing to invest in my amateur radio gear. Cheers!

Thanks Mr Ringmaster for i think the best video footage of the Droitwich towers i have seen. When i was in the UK in 2018 and staying at Birmingham i took the local bus to Wychbold to "look at long wave" I stood at that gate and looked through. There is actually a bus stop named "BBC Station" there near the well named Cat Wiskers Cattery. A rain storm had just cleared and the sun came through a break in the clouds and lit up the antennas and the four down wires were gleaming against a dark background.

Here in Virginia, USA, I've been able to receive the Droitwich LW station on cold, clear nights. I'm very sad to hear that it's being shut down and I'll badly miss it.

I no longer live in the Midlands, but I remember driving past this site on many occasions. It will be a sad day indeed when it closes. I still feel pangs of nostalgia for when the Rugby site closed and they moved MSF to Anthorn. It was always the 'time signal from Rugby' to me 😥

Hi Lewis, great informative video, Shane we are losing me and eventually lw rxer , I remember years ago in Germany picking up Radio 4 with good signal strength. 73 mark de G8RDE

Re. Rubidium - In 2008 I used a phase tracking receiver to look at the 198kHz signal from Droitwich. At the time my local timebase was only 3e-11, but lo and behold the 198kHz signal was drifting 30x that around the center frequency. About a year later it was still drifting. Maybe they fixed it, but my guess it that no one uses it because 1) better options exist and 2) it's broken too often, and for that reason they won't spend man-hours fix it....

500,000 watt transmitter... and people are scared of cell phones. 😅

Hi Lewis great stuff. Thanks for your time and effort to produce this video.

Amazing place, and history of of its use. Thanks for educating me Lewis.

Droitwich - the name is a legend!

Another top notch video sir. Bet it would be mega interesting to walk around in the buildings. I remember working maintenance years ago for GPO/BT and I used to have to go to the old sub stations in the middle of know where. Always reminded me of the Tardis inside the buildings.

In the olden days of analogue television. Iceland had a VHF CH 3 (and CH 4), 1,2 million watt transmitter (I don't have the document with me right now, but it was in this power range) in South Iceland and in Western Iceland. It was often detected in Europe when TVDX weather was favorable. The reason for this power, is that the Rúv TV signal was being broadcasted to fishing ship around south Iceland at long distance.

I was lucky to be taken round the site and control room at Droitwich when I joined the BBC back in 1974 while I was attending a three month course at the nearby BBC Engineering Training Centre at Wood Norton in Evesham. I've a recollection of a light bulb attached to a piece of metalwork within the control room which was just being energised by stray RF. It was used as a quick visual indication that the transmitter was working properly, although one of the engineers pointed out that you would know if it wasn't!

Great video and nice video and photos indeed! I thought that 200 m antenna for longwave to be a bit short, but after calculating I found 398 kHz = about 753 meters wavelength and those 200m is almost exactly 1/4 wavelength! As a ham radio operator I can only dream of such antennas! Tnx for sharing.

Can I recommend the Netflix's Portuguese Cold War drama, Gloria, which has the marvellous art deco setting of the Centro Emissor de Onda Curta, Pegões, Montijo, Portugal. 'Onda Curta', of course, being short wave, and the transmission centre from which Portuguese radio broadcast its Empire Service. It's actually a very good drama, but the bonus is the use of old control rooms and switching panels. Great viewing, and a reminder of how recently it was that Portugal was still a dictatorship, desperately attempting to hold the remnants of its empire together through it's doomed Angolan war. Sadly, the station is all but a ruin, but they didn't a remarkable restoration job of the areas they wanted to film in.

Brilliant love it all, love the history and anything to do with frequencies . Thanks for all that you do for us. Fascinating thanks again but it’s Sad to see and hear it all disappearing . Bloody DAB and all the rest. Thanks again for letting us see this before it’s gone for good. Alan from Luton 💯🍻👍👍ps drum and BASS , great days 💯👍

I'm going to miss Radio 4 LW when it goes. I've had reasonable reception when travelling in northern Europe, and then there's TMS. I'm sure I read somewhere that they turned the power down to increase the life of the valves. Not sure how true that is. Great video, Lewis. Thanks.

Congrats on the praise and recommendation coming from Medium Wave News, Lewis.

I always remember listening to R4 LW as I wandered France as a young man in the 1970s. A cracking nightime signal reliably received right down to the Pyrenees and across to the Alps. Happy days: we didn't seem to hate Europe back then.

Lewis is to radio like Robert Osborne was to American movies. He knows it top to bottom and side to side. Even if an old time radio guy argued with Lewis, the old timer would be wrong. Lewis has facts where the old timer was running on faded memories. Keep up the great work Lewis!

Unbelievable that they still use valves in the 198 kHz transmitter... they could have saved a lot of energy over the years, at 500 kW output, with a modern semiconductor transmitter operating in "switch mode". Installing it 20 years ago would have returned the investment many times. Probably a case of "yeah, but this is going to be shut down soon anyway, so let's not invest in that right now"...

I was lucky enough to have been shown around Droitwich during engineering works a few years ago. Not much to see since nearly all the beautiful art-deco buildings have gone except for the main hall and some feeder buildings but since I only wanted to see the Radio 4 LW transmitter I was happy. I was allowed to take some photos (for my own use only).

I knew the sadly departed Peter Mellors, a well known character in Droitwich. He was a career BBC man and very knowledgeable about the transmitter. The lifts in towers A and B were intended for maintenance, but they discovered that they affected the tuning of the antenna. You can see the lift cars up the towers in the position that gave the best tuning. And there they have stayed.

Your is a Great channel. Times are changing fast.. some good some bad. The biggest irony is how radio Caroline now broadcasts on the world service former antenna from Orford Ness. Keep up the good work. Thanks

Even for a building that housed pretty industrial equipment it had a beauty that I had never really seen much before. In a way it reminded me of the cable station at Hearts Content in Newfoundland Canada. Big bulky machinery but in a clean and beautiful(in its way) setting.

I live in a town called Bromsgrove and I can see this transmission site from my window. It’s especially visible at night because it’s lit up with red lamps.

A wonderfully researched and informative history of this triumph for OUR BBC and British engineering. Thank you

The importance of the LW transmitter goes well beyond public broadcast. In these days of widespread Internet service, very often through a Wi-Fi connection, people have forgotten how delicate such network infrastructure is. Should a civil or military emergency occur, both the telephone and Internet access are easily lost, following a loss of power or other mishaps. Therefore, during an emergency, the only method the UK government can provide directives to the public is through the LW radio service, which covers the entire national territory with one transmitter. Therefore the UK government should do the sensible thing - and take over the management of the UK LW transmitter infrastructure...

The wartime BBC was very careful to spread programme broadcasting over multiple, well separated transmitter sites. This was done by using landlines to send coordinated content to the transmitters. All used the same frequency - easier back then when there were relatively few broadcasters. A single powerful transmitter was a godsend to Luftwaffe aircrew as they navigated night bombing missions. Sometimes individual transmitters were thought to be aiding the enemy during bombing and were switched off temporarily. Listeners had been pre-warned about the very clear manifestations of that (suddenly receiving a distant rather than local signal).

I still love those curtain antennas and the tech side of it. They are, like in many countries, took offline. But are still visible where I live, but they are planning to put those down. So if I want pictures of these I have to be quick, I lost a lot, because of a crash from one of my hard disks. These were taken in the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium. Especially the Netherlands because they have a lot of transmitter sites, that is because the country is mainly flat, so radio transmissions are key in these kinds of environments. Also, the buildings where the actual transmitters were placed had great architectural value and being also beautiful to watch. Some of them are protected heritage.

Thank you very much for the upload.

Thanks again Lewis for another great, well-researched piece!

Really interesting video Lewis and beautifully put together…thanks

those mercury arc rectifiers are something to behold. photonic induction and others have some excellent footage of them operating as well as a description of their function.

Great narrative on this historic transmitter, Lewis (that I wish wasn't closing down!). 73, Clint

Droitwich and Sutton Coldfield are my south and north landmarks on my way home to the Midlands. When I see their red lights, I know I'm nearly home. I'm pretty sure aircraft into Birmingham use them as a landmark at night too - quite a few times I've been on a plane that came up from the Bristol Channel area, up to Worcester and Droitwich, turned over Redditch and then in to BHX. I will certainly miss their guiding beacons if they go, even if I dont consume their services.

I can hear 198 khz in Estonia at nights

Thanks for put this on

In a country as populous as England you can close down MW/LW transmitters and not affect massive numbers of people. For the disabled or elderly, a smart phone and or smart speaker with a cheap plan is all they really need to listen to radio online but before that there is DAB which as I understand it has a huge coverage all over the UK. Here in Australia no new AM transmitters have been licensed since the 80s, though plenty have changed hands. There are no plans to shut down AM radio as it still gets heavy use especially in rural areas. Even some AM music stations that have implemented FM have kept AM going for range and this is just recently. AM radio is vital in emergencies and when travelling rural areas it maybe your only choice (apart from your offline play list). There are no mobile phone signals out there.

Great video. I now live abroad but grew up not far from there. On a clear summer evening you could see the red lights on the top of each mast. They fascinated me as a kid. It's a shame to think they've been there so long but may soon be dismantled. A part of my childhood disappearing.

Thanks for this Lewis similar to when Rugby closed … Distribution warehouses now !

We need a few Filament-Current Machines around the place to cheer everyone up a bit! Thanks for this Lewis, fascinating as always!

The CBC in Canada runs several rebroadcaster stations specifically to make this setup go even father

I love those images at the end.

Very interesting. I can see the masts when I take my dog for a walk! They are very much part of the landscape of North Worcestershire.

Excellent video as always

Wow, what a beautiful building! That Art Deco/gothic revival-revival style rules. The early pictures of the transmitter hall are incredible. I do wonder what it looks like inside today, but perhaps it's best not to. It does my head in that the "magic of radio" is being superseded by a largely wired (well, optically) technology in my lifetime. The idea that audible signals could just be pulled from the air really captured my imagination as a kid ... Wonderful video, Lewis!

A very informative video, I drove past this installation on Saturday and said to the wife that I must find out more information about it, and here pops up a video about it.

just down the road from where i grew up... it sucks that they're going to be closing the site.. i can pretty much guarantee that arquiva are going to fill it up with crappy cell phone service towers. next time you're n this neck of the woods, would love to see one on the sutton coldfield tv transmitter (and the litchfield one)... my dad used to be a member of the ham radio club that used to be there, and they apparently had a long wire antenna that reached half way up the mast. there was also incidents a number of years ago with the garden center that was nearby where people with some major brand of swanky car would drive in the parking lot but not be able to drive out because something on the transmitter site was blocking their swanky keyfobs LOL

I,m no expert as to how it all works,just fascinated by radio masts and i,ve really enjoyed watching this.

A very interesting and informative video, thank you. As a boy I lived in west Cornwall and listened to Radio 2 on 1500m from Droitwich. At night you could often clearly hear BBC Radio 4 Midlands on 276m also from Droitwich I use to travel two to three times a year between Cornwall and Liverpool via train and would always look out for the Droitwich aerials from the train.

Great video..thanks for al your work producing the content

Very informative video bringing a clear view to listeners Well done Lewis

198 khz can usually be heard after dark in southern Finland

Thank you for a great memorial to a piece of history. Do you ever think we over-rely on RU-vid? When that goes someday a lot of history will go with it.

A sad day. I still remember my 7-year old self being overjoyed to pick-up the first sounds on my just finished crystal-receiver, a very magical experience. Something the youth of today will never experience.

As a kid It was always a great sight when travelling back from holidays seeing the lights on the mast because we knew we were nearly home .

Part of the radio control desk can be found in droitwich heritage and information center opposite the library in droitwich town center and it's the same one seen in the photos before the refurbishment it's in the back room with a lot of other radio equipment :)

Always welcomed the sight of the lights on the masts on my way home up the M5 from Bristol to Derby in the late 90s.

I remember seeing the term "Droitwich" printed on the tuner crescent of a 1950's radiogram as a child and wondering what it was, as much as where it might be. The term sounded like an expression of the sort of odd, squeaky noise one might hear when tuning between stations on the radio...

Lovely video, really interesting and I like the Steve Hillage-y musical interludes too!

I still actually listen to BBC4 on 198khz over here in Germany. We get a strong signal all day and night long.

Great video as usual, Lewis - well done. 🙂