Tag: beacon

May 26th – A 116 mile ride into the Peak District and back – it was good to see some corners of the Ashbourne and Hopton areas I hadn’t seen in a good while, as well as ride the High Peak and Tissington trails.

More photos on my main blog later.

I took time out to ride Hognaston Winn, site of the curious and almost alien -looking Trent DVOR, an aircraft navigational aid, sat incongruously in a field just off the Ashbourne to Wirksworth road. It’s quite one of the oddest radio installations I’ve ever seen, but provides a vital service – see more here.

A great ride on a surprisingly good day.

July 11th – I finished the working day with a meeting in Lichfield, and before facing an evil headwind on the way home, I took a look around the parks and open spaces of the city, which always look so good in summer.

From the Cathedral looming over the Memorial Gardens and Minster Pool, to the stunning lavender border in Festival Gardens, the gardeners are a credit to the city, they really are.

Take a bow folks, you should be very proud.

May 17th – I think this is a first for 365 days of biking. This is a photo of something that is no longer here.

This is a cellphone mast, located just off the A38 at Efflinch, near Barton under Needwood. Up until recently, there was a another transmission mast here with a very specific function: it broadcast a non-directional radio beacon for aircraft. The transmission was continual, incessant and could be picked up locally at the very end of the longwave band on a normal transistor radio; it broadcast the morse tones for the letters ‘LIC’ (for Lichfield) continuously in a mysterious, musical tone. I was transfixed by it as a kid, because I had no idea what it was.

If anyone back then had shown me a numbers station, my wee head would have exploded.

The station stopped transmitting in 2010 when the beacon was decommissioned, but I think the mast has only recently gone – I used to watch for it coming home along the A38. Cycling this way, often at dusk, I knew that from here, I was only an hour away from home.

When the relentless, inscrutable morse died, so did a tiny bit of my childhood.

Find out about the end of the LIC NDB beacon here.