Tag: Tetra

#365daysofbiking Radio activity

March 7th – Spinning over to Pelsall on at errand at dusk, I passed under the Old Cement Works Bridge at The Slough, and noted the radio masts there, the larger of which has always been a bit more than the average cellphone mast.

There since the days of analog mobile phones, it was the first cellphone basestation in the area and has been repeatedly upgraded as technology improved. I also carries on the same structure some microwave transceivers and what looks like maybe VHF telemetry antenna. It’s a busy mast for one lurking in a car park of an average, fairly remote trading estate.

Next to it of course, the three armed mast of a Tetra node, the UK emergency services digital network.

Antenna and masts fascinate me. And they never look better than against a dusk sky.

This journal is moving home. Find out more by clicking here

from Tumblr https://ift.tt/2QVxbGc
via IFTTT

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.

October 15th – A late afternoon spin around Brownhills, and my attention was snagged by the cellphone base station near the old cement works on Coppice Side. I recently featured a picture of Pye Green communications tower and noted that the microwave network was being dismantled. Whilst that’s true, Pye Green and others like it are still hubs of the telecoms network. Microwave transmission, rather than providing high bandwidth channels for live TV and suchlike like it used to, is till used for backhaul and interconnection purposes for the mobile phone network. The plethora of small drum antenna on this tower are pointing variously at Sutton Coldfield, Pye Green, Birmingham and Tameway Tower in Walsall. The shorter tower to the left is a Tetra unit providing support for emergency networks secure communications.