Brilliant. I remember going to the mast in the early 80's. You could get right up to it back then. In 1998 I was lucky enough to get a trip to the top of the Emley moor tower when NTL owned it. Happily it has a lift. :-)
Superb! I worked for the Post Office Engineering department TVNSC in Manchester from 1966 to 1972 and visited the Horwich microwave relay station manned by Brian Moss on several occasions and was shown round the ITV transmitter hall by Bill Kay. I joined Granada TV in 1972 and worked on Radio Links erecting dishes for OB`s on the 100 foot platform.Thanks for posting this it deserves a place in the TV archives !
I thought I was very factual till I watched this! BRILLIANT! I realise now that my knowledge of subjects barely scratches the surface! Thoroughly enjoyable to listen to an expert!
Absolutely wonderful and very informative. Thank you so much. I can see the transmitter aerial from my bedroom window from the outskirts of Wigan and must say that the new lights are very bright. My father worked at the loco works in Horwich in the sixties and used to describe each day the progress of the mast going up and up. Excellent documentary.
Brilliant video, thank you. That's where all my TV came from when I was growing up, had hours of fun moving the set top aerial around to get a good signal.
Aa a boy I lived in Liverpool and every day after school I would await the TV start-up: "This is Granada, broadcasting from the Winter Hill Transmitter of the Independent Television Authority............."
The coal seam just 50 feet below the surface may come as a surprise to many. We think of coal mining as going downward, not going up a hill. The seams of coal are given names, and usually have the same name many miles away. The seam being worked at the top of Winter Hill was the LOWER MOUNTAIN MINE. :-)
The test card at the end of this piece shows Carole Hersee who was born in 1958, I believe the picture shows the negative reversed so that she was less identifiable in the school room - she was selected in place of her sister who had recently lost her two front teeth.
An excellent factual video, presented in a no nonsense fashion, the like of which, the TV stations themselves have forsaken. Shame on them! '''Don't forget to turn off your sets, will you?''
My goodness I used to think we did it large in the RAF. I worked briefly at the former radar station RAF Aird Uig on the Outer Hebrides we operated from RAF Stornoway on a 2 1/2 day rotating shift off 2 men. It was only a single LF Amplifier with an output capable of 100kW although when I was thee we were on,y running about 13kW into the antenna. The antenna although seemed large at he time was around the 600 foot length, the whole structure was end fed and therefore the whole mast of triangular lattice construction sat on a ceramic base. The mast was supported by about 4 sets of radials with insulators at regular stages, some of the radials had fewer insulators mainly low down and these were active and formed a sort of parasol arrangement which helped reduce the input impedance similar I believe to the capacitive top hat effect. 😅 There was a single man lift cage that allowed access to most of the mast. The fascinating thing was the ATU instead of it being part of the final stage tuning of the lower powered HF transmitters I also worked on, it was an actual building !! If you have ever had anything to do with the site of the BT operated for the MOD site at the former Criggion station they had similar arrangements. The feeder from the transmitter fed into the ATU building which was lined in copper sheet and although memory is a bit sketchy now all of the L and C components (the TX output frequency was fixed so it only ever had to be set up when a change of frequency was required which would result in a lot of spanner work in the Tx a and the ATU. because the obs lights (3 or 4 clusters ) had to be connected to a mains supply and because the mast was live the mains cabling of the lamps had to match the length onto the base of the mast to avoid becoming parts of the antenna itself. There was a beautiful 3 phase transformer just for the lights. Later on working HF a at typically 10kW we used Marconi self tuning transmitters which often needed a bit of a tweak at times as they would tune up through 10dB attenuation inserted at the start, followed by pen stage tuning, final stage tune and load switch out the 10dB then set output level. Some of our transmitters were 1kW wideband amps that had 20 4CX250 arranged in 2 parallel rows of 10 and driven from a comman input transformer in anti phase to each side via a common tapered transmission line feeding the grids of all 10 valves on each side. The anodes in both sides in a similar fashion had a tapered transmission line connecting all 10 valves per side. Finally both of the tapered output transmission lines fed into a coupling to the output. It was c,ever how this amp worked as generally depending g upon the frequency, there would be about 4 to 6 valves providing the bulk of the power and as the French change across the HF band, the valves providing the output power would automatically move up and down the array, this was due to the tapered transmission lines providing a frequency response spread across the whole unit… the MOD used to provide us with Eimac valves but some bright spark decided to try and cut costs by buying Russian Svetlana make valves… these were unusual as the usual white ceramic was purple in the Russian ones… and by goodness they were rubbish!! about 40 % would trip off and blow the 3 fuses in the HT supply (a later mod replaced these with front panel circuit breakers) … a dodgy but helpful practice showed when the fuses had blown as a neon for each fuse was wired in parallel. Finally when the old MATELO HF site was closed I took some video where I made a long rod of about 6 foot and screwed it to the main circuit breaker handle for the transmitters in the TX hall so we could all pull the breaker at the designated time..we were all excited and wanted to start dismantling the transmitters immediately prior to the contractor coming in to start the rebuild …we had just switched off and we’re getting all of the tools ready to start the rip out and the chief comes running in shouting ,.,get it all back online there are aircraft flying and need the service … which we did and a few hours later we took it down and quickly made sure we couldn’t run it back up again.,
Really liked this film.... Thought about going up there somepoint with my mrs and my dog for a ramble.. Now I can tell her what part is for which network......Many thanks for doing it..
I live about 6 miles from the Winter Hill mast and have a brilliant view from my front bedroom window especially on a clear night the red aircraft warning lights are on. Also can anyone tell me if it has a lift shaft up the middle of the mast as countless Bolton folk have said this is true.
Hi Bill, great documentary. I wonder, what underground structures are by the masts - maybe for transmitters or as a semi-hardened structure for transmitters or personnel, for during the 1960s many of such sites formed part of the clandestine military Backbone network
I remember this being built. We lived in Adlington and as kids used to cross the moor from Rivington. No H&S in those days as we got right up to the tower and looked up the inside. Hollow concrete tube!
Great video. 55 mile range however Globe maths say it would need to be over 2000ft to reach that far, if horizon falls away at miles' squared x 8", then divide by 12 for feet. Believe transmitter range not Earth's given stats! Is a big part of going higher to get a more rarefied area of air (or lack of) to transmit in before being disturbed with many more atoms and losing it's range via interference etc? Many people say satellite TV comes from such towers too, and that satellite TV is similar to GPS - land based? Thanks
A very interesting and informative video. Also interesting to hear about the chances of seeing the Isle of Man from up there. I have, quite possibly, the most detailed image of the Isle of Man ever taken from such a distance. Just Google Winter Hill Isle of Man to find it on my flickr page.
