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Old 9th Nov 2018, 2:14 pm   #10
dave walsh
Dekatron
 
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Ramsbottom (Nr Bury) Lancs or Bexhill (Nr Hastings) Sussex.
Posts: 5,814
Default Re: Can you identify this? (Rediffusion Frequency Translator).

These boxes were around in Ramsbottom when CH4 appeared-never seen one since. The broadcast relay at Grants Tower couldn't accommodate an extra channel from Winter Hill. Homes with the Redifussion Cable Service [I'd guestimate half to a third by then] could indeed get the new channel via a translator box that overcame the problem but it was a £50 purchase-quite a lot circa 1982!

I had a cable connection to my house but had never been a customer. Despite a lot of criticism at the time for it's experimental content, the new Channel showed films such as Abel Gance's Napoleon and Dylan's Renaldo and Clara [that one two weeks after sending me a letter saying they had "no plans to Broadcast it in the near future"]. My solution wasn't very technical. I simply drove to my brothers house in Bury and recorded programs onto my Video Recorder there.

I recall spending a Saturday afternoon hanging out of my attic window with
an 18 element aerial and obtaining just the occasional faint image of the B+W Gance classic. Sadly, Holcombe Hill was a barrier to receiving the Winter Hill Transmissions [directly] no matter what I tried! That's indeed why Rammy became a cable pioneer in the fifties [like Bexhill]. Nobody seems to notice but quite a few of those much derided "way out" CH4 ideas still turn up within adverts today. A recent Ch5 program pointed out that Winter Hill is riddled with underground shafts and passages which surprised me. Did they know about that when the mast was erected I wonder?

Dave W

Last edited by dave walsh; 9th Nov 2018 at 2:19 pm.
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