Tag: radio

#365daysofbiking Tenant of the latticework

February 27th – This time of year one view that always snags my attention is that of the cellphone transmission mast at Kings Hill with a sunset behind it.

Tonight it looked particularly fine.

I always admire radio masts and installations – like pylons, always the minimum necessary to support their load, but rarely inelegant. They stand solid, conversing in energies undetectable to human senses, buzzing with commerce and electrical energy, but otherwise silently exchanging data with the atmosphere.

Hardly anyone notices them, but they a a huge necessity of the modern age, and they fascinate me.

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#365daysofbiking Tapping the ether

February 18th – There was a remarkable sunset, apparently, which I missed as I was in a windowless industrial unit. However, leaving I just caught the tail end of the bright sky behind the Kings Hill phone mast, silently tapping the ether for the hundreds of phone calls and data packets it continually relays for the community around it.

I love the mystery and appearance of radio masts.

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July 1st – It was a great sunset, which I caught best from Meerash near Hammerwich. 

The sunsets lately really have been excellent.

I’m also a sucker for radio transmitters and sunsets – I find something really enigmatic about them.

A great end to not the best day, but a good evening outing none the less.

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.

April 18th – I took the train to Macclesfield, and rode back. If the cycling game is to be upped this year, challenging rides are required, and this one was at the very limits of my cycling ability.

On my way, I visited Sutton Common, the Cold War microwave transmission station in the same series as Cannock’s Pye Green. Meaning to visit for years, I climbed to the peak of the hill at 403m to see it, and was rewarded with stunning vies of Macclesfield, Manchester and The Wirral, as well as the Roaches and Dane Valley.

It was a great day, sunny, but again, so cold. Look out for ride videos coming soon on my main blog.

November 2nd – I was lucky to pass through Darlaston tonight as the sun set, and the view over the landscape – today, a genuinely black Black Country – was beautiful; once, this view would have been marked by chimneys, stacks and furnaces; this evening, house lights, clear air and the glow of sodium discharge made the urban sprawl look like glowing embers of a fire that caught the clouds alight.

Watching on, like a sentry, the cellphone tower; constant, contracted, monitoring, trading it’s hundreds of concurrent conversations with the ether.

And there I stood, camera in hand, caught for a moment in ideas of technological progress and the beauty of the place I love.

November 29th – I returned to Brownhills via the cycleway and old Cement Works Bridge, hoping to see deer. Sadly my deer magnet was resolutely off and I saw nothing; but I did note this venerable mobile phone mast.

The same tower has been in use since the late 80s, when it had an analogue base station fitted. Since then, it’s acquired a curious variety of antenna from normal FM to microwave, and it now serves the local 4G network. A remarkable survivor.

Next to it in the trees is an Airwave Tetra emergency communications network base station – a secure mobile network for police, fire and ambulance. I’m unclear why this spot is so popular with radio infrastructure, but there sure is a lot going on.

April 9th – Hiding in plain sight on the treeline of a small copse on Sandhills, near Shire Oak, is a Tetra mast. Painted matt brown to blend in with the background, it’s not a mobile phone cell tower, but one of the nodes of the emergency services radio communications and telemetry network for the UK.

Erected in the last decade, Tetra is a secure system designed for use specifically with emergency services in mind. Working at a lower frequency than normal mobile GSM, it’s more efficient structurally, provides secure, encrypted communications and provides all the features required for modern operations.

The network wasn’t without controversy, as the earliest systems interfered with TV transmissions in some instances, and it has proven very expensive to implement, although the system is in use now in much of the developed world.

There are a fair few of these installations around. Look out for them – like this one, they can be hard to spot, but mostly share the same, three-element design.