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. 😀

@hobozero

9 ай бұрын

If I played a game where I had to find 5 real English place names from a list of real and fictional ones, I would get 0 out of 10. They all seem *unreal* to me. Dodderhill isn't a real place! You can't trick me! That was a name a writer came up with for a ridiculous parody English place name!

@BILLY-px3hw

9 ай бұрын

You I haven't seen it lumbering over the Empire Motorway either

@hobozero

9 ай бұрын

@@BILLY-px3hw that's the craziest part. I've *been* to England. I lived there for the better part of a year, and I *still* can't believe it's a real place

@andrewmaynard6693

9 ай бұрын

Michigan's pretty good with Native American names

@FarleyHillBilly

9 ай бұрын

Kingston Bagpuize, Matching Tye, ,Ugly, Nasty. Four out of five aint bad, maybe Bengeo

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.

@snail2171

9 ай бұрын

My first detector radio was made out of trash and home brew detecting crystal. At day time it received Radio Mayak USSR and at night it was perfect tuned to Voice of America.

@gman1010

9 ай бұрын

Really sad

@shodan2958

9 ай бұрын

I'm in my twenties and looking ahead it does seem to me the airwaves are set to go awfully silent in the next few decades. It seems only a matter of waiting to see if either radio or TV broadcasting go out first. I'm hoping to be one of the ones watching (and hopefully recording) the last minutes of linear terrestrial (broadcast) TV in the UK before it dies off.

@meilyrwilliams9280

9 ай бұрын

Really sad. I listen to PM on Radio 4 LW on my Grandparents’ old Bush radio when I’m doing the dishes. Almost every weekday. I’m gutted.

@user-yp7rn6tb2t

9 ай бұрын

Same A diode a piezoelectric earpiece ...thin copper wire and a 500 of condenser ..ferrite rod . Music culture no batteries All gone

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.

@frankjohnson7204

3 ай бұрын

The valve shortage is just lies spread by those who want any excuse for the service to close. The LF transmitters are still relatively modern and as efficient as they can be. They have the benefits of re-engineered solid state PDM (switching) modulators which reduced the valve count to just one per transmitter instead of two. I did a couple of spells, working there and latterly did some work on the LF service, helping to design a remote reset device should the LF service completely shut-down. When I last spoke to the Senior Engineer, he told me that EEV (who manufacture the valves) had retained the tooling and were willing to make as many as required. They just had to be ordered 12 months in advance and of course, I'm sure they can charge whatever they wanted for them....

@prabhakarv4193

11 күн бұрын

Very nice and informative. Thank you

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

@rovhalgrencparselstedt8343

9 ай бұрын

Yea its such a shame that we went away from beautiful art deco buildings of the 30's, to the boring metal box utilitarian buildings we have today for power plants, transmitting stations and such. It is also a shame that such nice looking buildings are abandoned and just left to sit and decay instead of reusing them and keeping the art deco style.

@dr_jaymz

9 ай бұрын

Sometimes nostalgia is so strong you can feel it in your chest.

@kenstevens5065

8 ай бұрын

There's quite a lot of interesting stuff online including one of the first open days which resulted in one of the first traffic jams!

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".

@darrensmith6999

9 ай бұрын

YUP Very True!!

@user-bh1oy8kj5q

9 ай бұрын

Spot on

@gavinmurrell3415

9 ай бұрын

This is Britain in the C21. Nothing good ever happens here.

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!

@karhukivi

9 ай бұрын

A retired nuclear sub engineer who lives near me told me he used to listen to the cricket scores on LW while submerged in a harbour of some "foreign power"!!

@alanolley7286

9 ай бұрын

Love it

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.

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.

@user-bh1oy8kj5q

9 ай бұрын

wow!

@owensmith7530

8 ай бұрын

So what distance away is it during the day? (ba-dum tish!)

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

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

@nicc5122

9 ай бұрын

The larger UK nuclear bunkers have BBC studions in them. Presumably they would be connected to local transmitters (likely MW) in such an event. Cold war has always been about 'fail safe' so I can understand why loss of a major transmission capable of being received out at sea (not underwater though) could be used as a 'signal' something catastrophic had occurred. Pretty sure the launch protocol would have some additional criteria for (nuclear) launch though..

@DeanJuvenal

9 ай бұрын

A slight modification. Tuning into the “Today” morning programme - 06:00 - 09:00 hrs on BBC R 4 - was the check that UK was still functioning.

@bobgorman9481

9 ай бұрын

​@@DeanJuvenalWhat ! You mean to say that the UK is actually operating at the moment !?

@JimWhitaker

9 ай бұрын

@@bobgorman9481 We never closed. ;-)

@cmartin_ok

9 ай бұрын

​@@bobgorman9481The uk, or at least the NHS, stopped operating when Lockdown was forced upon us in 2020

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.

@oojimaflip8952

9 ай бұрын

There is a row of Alms Houses just underneath the transmitters, it was possible to receive LW on the water pipes and taps!

@wisteela

9 ай бұрын

@@oojimaflip8952 A teacher at my school said he'd heard of people receiving it on their cooker!

@RowanHawkins

9 ай бұрын

If you are in the US, Marconi's Labs, in Maryland, and the resulting army complex now house a radio and computer history museum.

@thetugger5639

9 ай бұрын

I remember a school friend having an aunt close to these in droitwich and he said the same about the telephone and being able to hear the radio

@RichHaynes2012

9 ай бұрын

In normal times I wouldn't doubt that the BBC would turn it in to a museum. Nowadays they need every penny and the money they would get to turn it in to housing would be too much to turn down. Heres hoping some philanthropist will step in to preserve it.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

@ohioplayer-bl9em

9 ай бұрын

It’s beautiful isn’t it. Now everything is disposable and junk.

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.

@JesperD87

9 ай бұрын

The building at Lopikerkapel is indeed very nice and the one at Radio Kootwijk is even more spectacular. I'd like to make an addition though: before WW2 The Netherlands did have a long wave broadcast transmitter, operating at 1875 m (so 160 kHz). It was located in Huizen during daytime and in the evening a higher power transmitter at Radio Kootwijk was used in stead. That one wasn't located in the monumental 'cathedral' (building A) but in a wooden building in front of that (building B, no longer exists). The frequency suffered from a lot of interference from a transmitter in Eastern Europe when they increased the radiated power. A medium wave frequency (transmitter Hilversum, to be replaced by transmitter Lopikerkapel which was completed just before the war) carried a second program. After the war, at the 1950 Copenhagen conference, the ITU assigned a second medium wave frequency to The Netherlands and the 160 kHz long wave frequency was abandoned. At the 1978 Geneva confererence, the long wave frequency 171 kHz was assigned by the ITU to Belgium and The Nederlands, for a shared public broadcasting program, projected at 500 kW from Lopikerkapel but as you mentioned that was never put into operation. Unrealistic plans were made later for a commercial programme Delta 171 from the Radio Kootwijk site (to which local residents successfully resisted) and even an off shore transmitting site was proposed but it was never built. And thus the 171 kHz long wave frequency was indeed never used. Despite this, it is still allocated. Perhaps a Low Power AM license can be acquired for it (as is common practice for all Dutch medium wave frequencies nowadays, perhaps it also applies to the 171 kHz long wave)

@Rob2

9 ай бұрын

@@JesperD87 Thanks for that addition! Indeed I did not know about the 160 kHz, only about the 171 kHz and its long story. The building in Lopikerkapel was open last weekend for monument weekend, and the broadcast transmitter museum now again has a permanent exhibition in the basement.

@JesperD87

9 ай бұрын

@@Rob2 I missed monument weekend, unfortunately. I've only seen Lopikerkapel's interior on photographs so far. Good to know about the Broadcasting Museum's permanent exhibition in the basement, I'm interested in visiting that. Thanks for the info!

@Rob2

Ай бұрын

@@stevenoneill7166 It is quite costly to operate a 500kW transmitter (at Dutch energy prices) only for you. Instead, listen to an internet stream. Much cheaper and much better quality.

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.

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.

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

@sullivan912

9 ай бұрын

You and me both. In addition to MW (AM on your side of the pond) and LW, I miss the activity on the SW bands, which now seem to be dominated by China and a handful of religious broadcasters.

@6yjjk

9 ай бұрын

Fond memories of flying through the Scottish highlands at *mumble* feet AGL with Atlantic 252 tuned on the ADF...

@MeTube3

9 ай бұрын

NDB beacons are used all over the world in the UK they are 250-450 kHz so slightly shorter wavelength than the broadcast LW. Broadcast stations can be heard over ADF audio.

@ropatidee5427

4 ай бұрын

in the us in the 70s, 3 long wave bands were used for public emergency antennas...167, 179 and 191khz

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’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.

@EdgyNumber1

9 ай бұрын

Given the way the world seems to be head, perhaps a big mistake?

@electrickery

9 ай бұрын

@@EdgyNumber1 Could well be. We used to have LW navigation systems (Datatrak, Decca, ...) which were essentially un-jammable... meanwhile GPS can be jammed with a box the size of a cigarette packet. I wonder if we're going to regret tearing down LW?

@organisten

9 ай бұрын

@@electrickery In Norway, LW and MW are gone, and FM was turned off six years ago. Only a few local radio stations have been given a stay of execution. In most parts of Norway there is nothing on FM at all.

@organisten

9 ай бұрын

@@electrickery kzread.info/dash/bejne/daiIz6-feJfgido.htmlsi=sHqDlq2yYxU8RTHE

@156dave

9 ай бұрын

We used MSF vlf at Rugby

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 👍

@richards1163

9 ай бұрын

Very few people have a receiver for this station now, sad indeed

@rucker69

9 ай бұрын

Perhaps the effects you mentioned are intentional... sinister.

@L1RW

9 ай бұрын

No one (apart from enthusiasts) has a radio capable of receiving long wave. All new radios are FM/DAB/DAB+.

@Muzer0

9 ай бұрын

"nobody seems to care that the 999/112 service will not be available during a power cut." Get a UPS for your phone/router/modem then. To be honest I don't see a benefit to maintaining a massively expensive and obsolete infrastructure network for one benefit which a well-informed consumer can replicate on the new system anyway. (And if you're talking about a power cut on a national scale - I would hope that core internet infrastructure sites have backup generators. Of course they won't last forever, but I wonder how many 999 call centres would be able to continue to operate effectively for any substantial amount of time in those circumstances?)

@lmaoroflcopter

9 ай бұрын

​@Muzer0 I'm confused how the guy thinks copper phone lines work. Without power, they're just as busted. The only difference is in a local outage the phone lines DC provides a secondary source to your home to enable your phones to function, but any sufficiently impactful disruption to the power network would render copper phone lines as useless as glass fibre.

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.

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?

@simonhodgetts6530

9 ай бұрын

It’s a beautiful building - redolent of industrial buildings such as Bankside and Battersea Power Station. I hope it can be preserved!

@JimWhitaker

9 ай бұрын

I'm not sure that they were "aping" Art Deco; they were building in the heart of that movement.

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 .

@Dickinsonradiotv

9 ай бұрын

And in Aston and Sutton Coldfield, Birmingham, music on telephone lines. Having to fit filters on lines.

@user-yp7rn6tb2t

9 ай бұрын

We had a fridge that sometimes picked up radio sounds

@alexnelson9512

9 ай бұрын

_Has anybody ever thought of the health implications of living so close to such a powerful signal that can be transmitted across the nation? Yes, just another conspiracy theory! _*_(They would not tell us if they knew anything about the implications of such.)_*

@alexnelson9512

9 ай бұрын

@@user-yp7rn6tb2t _I have heard of water pipes and even gas cookers picking up a transmitted signal._

@kenstevens5065

9 ай бұрын

​@@DickinsonradiotvWhat about picking up radio signals via tooth fillings?

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

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.

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 🤗

@EgoChip

9 ай бұрын

1053, 1089 and a bit of FM too.

@TestGearJunkie.

9 ай бұрын

I recently bought an imported American car, and the AM radio is set for 10kHz spacing instead of 9kHz, so it won't pick up 1053 and the others. Must see if it can be reprogrammed, although maybe what's the point..? 😿

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.

@lmaoroflcopter

9 ай бұрын

Its alright though most folk have DAB these days. So FM transmitters aren't going offline given the use of FM IBOC, more a case of FM programming going offline.

@SolisNotSolis

9 ай бұрын

I wouldn't worry. The "Internet" takes STL feed to the majority of mast sites now anyway, so there wouldn't be a programme even if the transmitter stayed live, and hadn't lost it's power

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!

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!

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).

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

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

@CarolineFord1

2 ай бұрын

Yes, which is why you had to change to radio 2’s frequency to listen to the chart show in stereo!

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.

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 😥

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.

@David_Granger

9 ай бұрын

talkSport's Droitwich frequency is on many nights completely noise free, BBC Radio 4 LW is quite noisy but still easily understandable.

@6yjjk

9 ай бұрын

I can remember being on holiday in northern Spain and my dad driving to a spot where reception was good enough to get the news.

@heckelphon

9 ай бұрын

I remember on the night of the Big Storm in 1987 I was on a truck ferry from Harwich (that was fun in itself!) in order to drive down to southern Germany. Once down in the southern Schwarzwald the following afternoon I drove up towards Hochblauen to pick up the LW signal from radio 4 and was astonished to hear what had just happened back in the UK.

@Radiodaze

9 ай бұрын

Reception can be extremely good on my car radio at night. I can even detect it on same during the day. I'm in the Algarve, Portugal and I'm sorry this convenient method of listening is coming to an end. Radio 4 and the overnight World Service remains the world's greatest listen.

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.

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.

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

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

@arthurtwoshedsjackson6266

9 ай бұрын

When you gonna get a radio RDE and come back on the air

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....

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.

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 💯👍

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 .

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 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.

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.

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.

Thank you very much for the upload.

Droitwich - the name is a legend!

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!

Fascinating video. I listen to radio 4 on long wave in county Cork, Ireland. Will be gutted when it stops transmission

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!

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.

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

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.

Thanks for put this on

Really interesting video Lewis and beautifully put together…thanks

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.

@nonsequitor

9 ай бұрын

Absolutely. Used to be my link to home. And something that made borders seem less of a thing. Sad times. Just another nail in the coffin 🇬🇧🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️

@David_Granger

9 ай бұрын

If what the station runs on at the moment is actually turned down power, then that's impressive. it's still perfectly receivable in Austria.

@sarkybugger5009

9 ай бұрын

@@David_Granger Unfortunately not in the bit of Austria that I spent three weeks in, a few years back. The somewhat large mountain half a mile up the road may have had a part to play... 🤔

@David_Granger

9 ай бұрын

@sarkybugger5009 yeah, mountains block AM radio signals. That's one of the main reasons Austria went FM only really early. In the mountains, it's simply not possible to have one AM transmitter covering a large area, FM just works better. In some of the more flat areas in Austria, BBC Radio 4 and and other LW and MW stations can be received easily.

@caddelworth

9 ай бұрын

It's entirely likely that the reduction of power was to prolong the life of the valves. When I visited Droitwich as part of my BBC course in 1974, they were worried even then about the extreme scarcity of the valves. I don't know if you've ever seen an enormous valve of that type, let alone in an equally huge custom-built glass-fronted wooden case (no doubt built by craftsmen), but I can tell you it's a massively (pun intended!) impressive sight!

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.

Thank's for thie video, I lived about 7 X times 1500mts from the radio ststion, and can see the lights on the tower's at night.

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

I love seeing these broadcasting plants.

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

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

Excellent video as always

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

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

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

@RingwayManchester

9 ай бұрын

Glad it was helpful!

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

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.

Many thanks Lewis, that was really interesting. 👍

Great video as usual, Lewis - well done. 🙂

@RingwayManchester

9 ай бұрын

Many thanks!

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 lovely, informative video.

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 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.

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

Thanks for this one,

Excellent history of an iconic site.

Excellent informative video! 👍🏻🎅👍🏻

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

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.

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

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

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).

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.

@user-yp7rn6tb2t

9 ай бұрын

Hearing a radio station from thousand miles away on a homebuilt radio Like otherworldly Back in the 60 s All gone thanks to digital

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.

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.

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

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"...

@laverdanick

9 ай бұрын

It’s solid state right up to the final output valve. The antenna is regularly hit by lightning which doesn’t trouble the valve that much. We had 12 strikes in 20 minutes during one of my shifts there. AM is inherently inefficient as half of the power is in the carrier.

@Rob2

9 ай бұрын

@@laverdanick Ok, I would hope those super-efficient semiconductor transmiters (e.g. Nautel NX) are sufficiently protected to survive that as well. And at least you have the >90% mains to output efficiency, while with a tube final it will be half of that or less.

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...

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.

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.

Been press the transmitter many times, going to join the M5. Many thanks for your video very interesting 😊