The Cynwyl Elfed television relay station is sited on high ground to the east of the village of
Cynwyl Elfed to the north of
Carmarthen. It was originally built in mid 1989 as a fill-in relay for
UHF
Ultra high frequency (UHF) is the ITU designation for radio frequencies in the range between 300 megahertz (MHz) and 3 gigahertz (GHz), also known as the decimetre band as the wavelengths range from one meter to one tenth of a meter (on ...
analogue colour television covering the village of Cynwyl Elfed and the surrounding community. It consists of a 14 m self-supporting lattice steel mast standing on a hillside which is itself about 115 m above sea level. The transmissions are beamed west to cover the target. The Cynwyl Elfed transmission station is owned and operated by
Arqiva.
Cynwyl Elfed transmitter re-radiates the signal received off-air from
Preseli
Preseli Pembrokeshire (, ; cy, Preseli Sir Benfro) was one of six local government districts of Dyfed in West Wales from 1974 to 1996. Until 1987 the name of the district was Preseli. The district took its name from the Preseli Hills.
Creation
Th ...
about 20 km to the west. When it came, the
digital switchover process for Cynwyl Elfed duplicated the timing at Preseli with the first stage taking place on 19 August 2009 and with the second stage being completed on 16 September 2009. After the switchover process, analogue channels had ceased broadcasting permanently and the Freeview digital TV services were radiated at an ERP of 2 W each.
Channels listed by frequency
Analogue television
5 June 1989 - 19 August 2009
Cynwyl Elfed entered service on the same day as did the nearby repeater at
Bronwydd Arms
Bronwydd is a village and a community in the county of Carmarthenshire, Wales, situated about three miles north of Carmarthen in the valley of the River Gwili. Bronwydd community comprises the village of Bronwydd Arms, a couple of nearby hamlets ...
.
Being in Wales, both transmitted the
S4C
S4C (, ''Sianel Pedwar Cymru'', meaning ''Channel Four Wales'') is a Welsh language free-to-air public broadcast television channel. Launched on 1 November 1982, it was the first television channel to be aimed specifically at a Welsh-speaking ...
variant of Channel 4.
Analogue and digital television
19 August 2009 - 16 September 2009
The UK's
digital switchover commenced at Preseli (and therefore at Cynwyl Elfed and all its other relays) on 19 August 2009. Analogue BBC Two Wales on channel 28 was first to close, and ITV1 Wales was moved to that channel for its final three weeks of service. The new digital BBC A mux then started up in 64-QAM and at full power (i.e. 2 W) on channel 25 which had been vacated in the shuffle.
Digital television
16 September 2009 - present
The remaining analogue TV services were closed down and the digital multiplexes took over on the original analogue channels' frequencies.
References
External links
The Transmission Gallery: Cynwyl Elfed
{{Television transmitters in the UK
Transmitter sites in Wales