Orfordness transmitting station
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

The Orfordness transmitting station was a major radio broadcasting facility at
Orford Ness Orford Ness is a cuspate foreland shingle spit on the Suffolk coast in Great Britain, linked to the mainland at Aldeburgh and stretching along the coast to Orford and down to North Weir Point, opposite Shingle Street. It is divided from the m ...
on the
Suffolk Suffolk () is a ceremonial county of England in East Anglia. It borders Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south; the North Sea lies to the east. The county town is Ipswich; other important towns include Lowes ...
coast in the United Kingdom able to broadcast to much of Europe. It closed in May 2012 after more than 30 years of service. In 2017
Radio Caroline Radio Caroline is a British radio station founded in 1964 by Ronan O'Rahilly and Alan Crawford initially to circumvent the record companies' control of popular music broadcasting in the United Kingdom and the BBC's radio broadcasting monopoly. ...
started broadcasting from the site, though not with the same intended coverage of an audience in Europe as the original station. The station was designed to transmit powerful
medium wave Medium wave (MW) is the part of the medium frequency (MF) radio band used mainly for AM radio broadcasting. The spectrum provides about 120 channels with more limited sound quality than FM stations on the FM broadcast band. During the daytime ...
( AM) signals to much of Europe on two frequencies, 648 and 1296 kHz. Built by the British government, the facility passed through various owners after privatisation in 1997. From 2010, it was owned by a large engineering and defence services company, the
Babcock International Group Babcock International Group plc is a British aerospace, defence and nuclear engineering services company based in London, England. It specialises in managing complex assets and infrastructure. Although the company has civil contracts, its main b ...
. The current owner of the site is a telecommunications company called Cobra Mist Limited, set up in 2015. Over the years, the Orfordness station carried a variety of radio services. It was best known, particularly in the UK, for transmitting the
BBC World Service The BBC World Service is an international broadcasting, international broadcaster owned and operated by the BBC, with funding from the Government of the United Kingdom, British Government through the Foreign Secretary, Foreign Secretary's o ...
in English around the clock on 648 kHz from September 1982 until March 2011. The station's name is written as one word while that of the shingle spit on which it sits is two words.


History

The site was originally built in the late 1960s for an experimental over-the-horizon radar station known as
Cobra Mist Cobra Mist was the codename for an Anglo-American experimental over-the-horizon radar station at Orford Ness, England. It was known technically as AN/FPS-95 and sometimes referred to as System 441a; a reference to the project as a whole. Cobra ...
. The radar never worked satisfactorily and the project was scrapped in 1973. The site and buildings were taken over in 1975 by the
Foreign and Commonwealth Office The Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) is a Departments of the Government of the United Kingdom, department of the Government of the United Kingdom. Equivalent to other countries' Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ministries of fore ...
's Communications Engineering Department (still better known by its previous name, the
Diplomatic Wireless Service The Diplomatic Wireless Service (DWS) was the name of the communications system set up for the British Foreign Office by Brigadier Richard Gambier-Parry, the first Foreign Office Director of Communications, in the latter part of 1945. It grew o ...
), who installed a 50- kW medium-wave broadcast transmitter. Following successful tests and the installation of further transmitters, from 1978 the site shared responsibility for the BBC's medium-wave services to Europe which had been provided since the Second World War by an FCO transmitting station at Crowborough in
Sussex Sussex (), from the Old English (), is a historic county in South East England that was formerly an independent medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom. It is bounded to the west by Hampshire, north by Surrey, northeast by Kent, south by the English ...
. After the Crowborough station closed in September 1982, Orfordness handled all such BBC transmissions. In 1986, the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board ex ...
itself took over the running of the site from the FCO, although the latter retained ownership of the station. In 1997, as part of the privatization of all transmitting stations in the UK used by the BBC, the station was bought by Merlin Communications International Ltd (usually known simply as Merlin), a company formed by former BBC engineers and frequency managers. In 2001, Merlin was acquired by VT Group plc (known as Vosper Thorneycroft until 2002) and renamed VT Merlin Communications, then just VT Communications. In 2010, VT Communications was bought by Babcock.


BBC transmissions

From September 1982, the 648 kHz channel was used to carry
BBC World Service The BBC World Service is an international broadcasting, international broadcaster owned and operated by the BBC, with funding from the Government of the United Kingdom, British Government through the Foreign Secretary, Foreign Secretary's o ...
programmes in English around the clock. From 1987 and into the 1990s, the channel carried a tailored service, branded BBC 648, in which some French and German programmes were interwoven with the main output in English. The French service closed in 1995, and the BBC's German service in 1999, and 648 reverted to being English-only. The 1296 kHz channel, which Orfordness transmitted from 1978, was used for BBC broadcasts in east European languages during the evening and early morning. This use of 1296 was phased out after it became possible to relay the BBC on FM within the target countries, following the end of the
Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
.


Post BBC transmissions


648 kHz

Following cuts in the BBC World Service budget, its transmissions in English on 648 from Orfordness ceased at 0000 GMT/ UTC on 27 March 2011. The 648 channel came back on the air in August and September 2011 as a temporary measure for the Dutch domestic news/information network
Radio 1 Radio 1 or Radio One most commonly refers to: *BBC Radio 1, a music radio station from the BBC ** BBC Radio 1Xtra, a digital radio station broadcasting black music *CBC Radio One, a talk radio station operated by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporatio ...
. This was broadcast from Orfordness following fires at the Lopik and
Hoogersmilde Hoogersmilde is a village in the Dutch province of Drenthe. It is a part of the municipality of Midden-Drenthe, and lies about 16 km southwest of Assen. History The village was first mentioned in 1634 as Hooge Smilde, and means "high Smilde ...
FM transmitting sites in the Netherlands on 15 July 2011.


1296 kHz

In 2001, the Dutch station Radio Nationaal hired the use of 1296 to beam its signal to the target audience in the Netherlands and Belgium. In 2008, an EU-funded programme in English, ''Network Europe'', was aired on 1296 for half-an-hour a day. Between 2003 and 2012, BBC World Service used Orfordness on 1296 kHz at limited times of the day for transmissions using the DRM digital radio system.
Radio Netherlands Radio Netherlands (RNW; nl, Radio Nederland Wereldomroep) was a public radio and television network based in Hilversum, producing and transmitting programmes for international audiences outside the Netherlands from 1947 to 2012. Its services i ...
hired 1296 at other times of the day for analogue broadcasts in Dutch. The final transmission from Orfordness (on either frequency) was a farewell 24-hour broadcast by Radio Netherlands on 10–11 May 2012, marking the end of its Dutch service.


Current status of the site

In October 2012, the UK broadcasting regulator
Ofcom The Office of Communications, commonly known as Ofcom, is the government-approved regulatory and competition authority for the broadcasting, telecommunications and postal industries of the United Kingdom. Ofcom has wide-ranging powers acros ...
withdrew Babcock’s authorisation to use 648 kHz. Notionally, therefore, Babcock still retained the right to transmit from Orfordness on the other frequency (1296 kHz). However, no further broadcasts were made. Prior to selling the site to Cobra Mist Ltd, Babcock removed all transmitter equipment, although as of August 2016 all three aerial systems were still standing. In 2017 Cobra Mist Ltd entered into an agreement with
Radio Caroline Radio Caroline is a British radio station founded in 1964 by Ronan O'Rahilly and Alan Crawford initially to circumvent the record companies' control of popular music broadcasting in the United Kingdom and the BBC's radio broadcasting monopoly. ...
to transmit their services on 648 kHz using the omni-directional mast (see below). Test transmissions began in November 2017 and full service commenced on 22 December 2017. The Ofcom licence for 648 kHz was awarded to Radio Caroline in June 2017.


Transmitters

A number of transmitters were installed on the site over the years, the most powerful being an AEG-Telefunken S4006 which had a maximum output of 600  kW. However, registration listings for both 648 and 1296 kHz always gave 500 kW as the maximum power used on both frequencies. Transmissions on 648 kHz from the AEG-Telefunken S4006 used dynamic carrier control, an energy-saving technique in which the power of the transmitter's carrier signal is reduced when the audio level is low. Other transmitters included two Doherty 250 kW units, designated ORF 2A and 2B (both originally at Crowborough), whose outputs could be combined to give 500 kW on a single frequency.Tricks of the Trade
Article by Dave Porter, Andy Matheson and Pete Edwards in ''Signal'' magazine, issue 14. A DRM-capable Nautel NA200 transmitter was commissioned in 2003 and radiated digital signals on 1296 kHz. It was designated ORF 4. Although rated at 200 kW, when operating in DRM mode it generally ran with an output power of 35 kW. The original 50 kW transmitter (a
Continental Electronics Continental Electronics is an American manufacturer of broadcast and military radio transmitters, based in Dallas, Texas. Although Continental today is best known for its FM, shortwave, and military VLF transmitters, Continental is most signific ...
type 317), installed at Orfordness in 1975 and used for the station's initial tests, was brought back into service following the major storm that hit southern England during the night of 15-16 October 1987, which cut the main electricity supply to the site.


Aerial systems

The station has two directional aerial (antenna) systems: one for 648 kHz and one for 1296 kHz. The directional aerial for 648 kHz (erected in 1981-82) consists of a row of five 106.7 metre (350 ft) freestanding
steel Steel is an alloy made up of iron with added carbon to improve its strength and fracture resistance compared to other forms of iron. Many other elements may be present or added. Stainless steels that are corrosion- and oxidation-resistant ty ...
lattice
towers A tower is a tall structure, taller than it is wide, often by a significant factor. Towers are distinguished from masts by their lack of guy-wires and are therefore, along with tall buildings, self-supporting structures. Towers are specifica ...
of triangular cross section, insulated at their base. All five towers were driven. It was beamed at 131 degrees (i.e. south-east) though for practical purposes the exact bearing was nominal as the beam was very broad towards the east and south. It provided daytime coverage of Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, north-east France and north-west Germany by ground wave propagation; and night-time coverage of much of Europe by skywave propagation. The directional aerial for 1296 kHz (erected in 1978) consists of six freestanding steel lattice towers. Unlike the directional aerial for 648 kHz, they are arranged in two parallel rows with three towers in each. Only the middle tower of each three was driven; the other towers acted as passive reflector and director elements. It was beamed at 96 degrees (i.e. east) and was originally mainly intended for night-time (skywave) coverage of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and the western USSR, key target areas for the BBC during the Cold War. It could also be used for daytime coverage of the Netherlands and Belgium. Both the 648 and 1296 directional aerials have limited radiation to the west, meaning that, despite the high power of the transmitters, reception of Orfordness within the UK was poor or non-existent, with the notable exception of parts of south-east England (including London) and
East Anglia East Anglia is an area in the East of England, often defined as including the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire. The name derives from the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the East Angles, a people whose name originated in Anglia, in ...
. There is also a back-up omni-directional mast radiator for 648 kHz, erected in 1983, which can only handle transmitter powers of up to 250 kW and was used when maintenance work was being carried out on the directional antenna. This mast is now used to transmit Radio Caroline on 648 kHz.


See also

*
Radio masts and towers Radio masts and towers are typically tall structures designed to support antennas for telecommunications and broadcasting, including television. There are two main types: guyed and self-supporting structures. They are among the tallest human-made ...
*
List of towers Several extant building fulfill the engineering definition of a tower: "a tall human structure, always taller than it is wide, for public or regular operational access by humans, but not for living in or office work, and are ''self-supporting' ...
* List of masts * List of radio stations in the United Kingdom * Orfordness Beacon


References


External links


Radio Caroline on 648 at OrfordnessOrfordness Nature Reserve
— National Trust * http://tx.mb21.co.uk/gallery/orfordness.php *http://www.vimeo.com/20996209 Profile of the transmitting station and interview made in 2003 with Andy Matheson, Station Manager Orfordness, then VT Communications, now owned by Babcock. {{BBC World Service Buildings and structures in Suffolk Transmitter sites in England Transmitting station