A Visit to the Woofferton Transmitting Site


Hot on the heels of the recently released video tour of the now-decommissioned VOA - Bethany transmitting site (see blog here), there's a new transmitter tour now available on YouTube. 
The Woofferton site in England is put under the microscope by Senior Engineer, Dave Porter G4OYX. As you are aware, this site is still very much in operation on a daily basis, so it's interesting to see inside (and up close) a working transmitter operation. And, Dave "fires up" one of the 250 kW units specially for this video!

 The tour is technical in nature, and will be of interest to DXers and SWLs, as well as regular amateur (ham) radio operators. When I watched it on YouTube this morning, I noticed that there hadn't been many "views" as yet. So, hopefully as the word gets around, more people will take the time to check this out.

 Being a musician, I was tickled to hear that some of the large coils used inn the transmitters were, in fact, manufactured by the well-known Boosey & Hawkes brass instrument company. I guess their long-standing experience of making trombones and trumpets meant that they had the equipment to bend the metal tubing into circular coils - always a difficult task because of the tendency for the walls of the tubing to collapse inwards and flatten, instead of keeping its rounded tubular state. (I could go on about how they do that, but I won't bore you here with the details!)

 Hopefully there will be more video footage added in the near future showing the Woofferton antennae arrays. So far, the series only takes in the actual transmitters.

 My thanks to Thomas Witherspoon and his excellent blog: http://swling.com/blog/ for the alert on this video. Because the tour is currently in seven parts, Thomas has put together a playlist of the clips in correct sequence, which can be found at: BBC Woofferton Tour.

 Also worth checking out is the wonderful pdf history document "Fifty Years of Transmitting at BBC Woofferton 1943-1993 - A Social and Technical History of a Short Wave Station". This was originally on the BBC Engineering website, but I had difficulty downloading it because the file appears to be corrupted. Fortunately, Thomas also has this document on his SWLing server, so i suggest you grab a copy from there at: http://swling.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/woof50y-v2.pdf


 73 and have a great weekend everyone!

 Rob VK3BVW

Comments

Post a Comment

Comments are moderated and may not appear immediately. If your comment isn’t visible right away, it has been received and will be published shortly.

Popular posts from this blog

RETRO RECEIVER REVIEW # 21 - The Kenwood R-5000

Image
RETRO RECEIVER REVIEW #21 (You can click on all photos in this article for a close-up view) KENWOOD R-5000 Performance and Innovation by ROB WAGNER VK3BVW This extended blog post first appeared as a feature article in the February 2024 issue of The Spectrum Monitor magazine. Further details on this excellent publication are available at www.thespectrummonitor.com I have always wanted to own a Kenwood R-5000 receiver. Perhaps I was dazzled by the mystique that appeared to surround this rig. Somehow, it had always been on top of my bucket list of pre-loved rigs that I wanted sitting on the desk of the radio shack.  Finally, one showed up at a local Sunday morning Hamfest, and I happened to have just enough dollars in my pocket to make a purchase. It appeared to have lived a hard life. The case looked knocked around and was pretty dirty inside and out. So, while I would have liked to have owned a unit in better condition, the price was right, and I decided to take it on as a l...
Read more

REVIEW: WELLBROOK ALA1530S+ LOOP ANTENNA

Image
PRODUCT REVIEW: WELLBROOK ALA1530S+ LOOP ANTENNA by Michael Stevenson (Guest Contributor) This is a review and my opinion of the Wellbrook ALA1530S+ P–1 Active receiving Antenna. For further information, details and specifications then please visit: www.wellbrook.uk.com Background I have been a keen shortwave listener since 1970 and have had many receivers and antenna types during this time. Currently I have two wire antennas, a PAR Electronics EF-SWL 15 meter with impedance matching transformer, made in the US; and a home made 17 meter wire with balun. I also have a dedicated multi-stake ground or earthing system to compliment my receiver and antennas. I live in suburbia Port Macquarie, New South Wales on the east coast of Australia. Even though all our electricity wiring is under ground in our housing estate, I live in an environment where there are all types of man-made noises coming from modern electronic and electrical equipment used by my neighbours The wire a...
Read more

RETRO RECEIVER REVIEW #20 - The SONY ICF-5900W

Image
RETRO RECEIVER REVIEW #20 SONY ICF-5900W by CRAIG SEAGER VK2HBT This time around, I thought we might direct our attention to one of the many portable receivers of yesteryear, and it is perhaps appropriate that we choose a manufacturer that continued to produce quality equipment featuring shortwave coverage until long after. I’m sure our Japanese friends will concur with the submission that Japan is a land of short-lived, but enthusiastically embraced fads.  Whether it be karaoke, yo-yos with brains, electronics pets or Pokémon, each craze sweeps the country in such a way that captures the attention of the rest of the world and is usually associated with some pretty smart home-grown technology.   In the mid to late 1970s, shortwave listening (or “BCL”) was the flavour of the month, with teenagers (and some older folk!) compiling large QSL collections and forming SWL and DX clubs all over the country.  Nowadays, you’d be fairly hard-pressed to find any external broadcas...
Read more