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Old 19th Aug 2017, 8:36 pm   #1
russell_w_b
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Default Rampisham: All Gone bar One...

The aerial towers at Rampisham have finally bitten the dust, bar one of them: pulled down yesterday.

Some classic 1961 footage of how things used to be at RMP are on the BBC Spotlight Facebook page here.

https://www.facebook.com/bbcspotligh...location=group
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Old 19th Aug 2017, 9:43 pm   #2
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Default Re: Rampisham: All Gone bar One...

Thanks for the video: interesting to see the railway that the old transmitter used for changing frequency.
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Old 19th Aug 2017, 9:52 pm   #3
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Default Re: Rampisham: All Gone bar One...

The Marconi SWB18s all used rail-mounted trucks to change bands, complete with sets of points! We had them at Skelton and at Daventry too.

Here's a 1956 pic one of the trucks at Skelton with a Mr Crust, Transmitter Engineer, setting the SWB18 up for a different band. Tubular capacitors at the rear and coils to the front.
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Old 20th Aug 2017, 9:28 am   #4
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Default Re: Rampisham: All Gone bar One...

Shame to hear that. When we lived in Dorset I would always stop to admire those aerials!
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Old 20th Aug 2017, 9:51 am   #5
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Default Re: Rampisham: All Gone bar One...

Fascinating stuff!

Thanks for posting.

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Old 20th Aug 2017, 2:23 pm   #6
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Default Re: Rampisham: All Gone bar One...

Been past Rampisham more times than I care to remember sad to see the towers go was quite the mark on the landscape.

Imagine designing the electricity for a place like that, require a huge amount of power in the middle of nowhere where a transformer on a pole usually suffices.
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Old 20th Aug 2017, 2:57 pm   #7
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Default Re: Rampisham: All Gone bar One...

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Imagine designing the electricity for a place like that, require a huge amount of power in the middle of nowhere where a transformer on a pole usually suffices.
Rampisham is on the main National Grid network from Yeovil, which is why I think it is (was?) a site considered suitable for solar renewables; an easy 'tap-in' point.

I can't remember the exact figures for RMP, but Skelton's maximum demand used to be 8.9MVA when all the seventeen transmitters were extant. RMP would be something like 4MVA.
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Old 20th Aug 2017, 3:05 pm   #8
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Default Re: Rampisham: All Gone bar One...

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Been past Rampisham more times than I care to remember sad to see the towers go was quite the mark on the landscape.
Do you remember the Dorchester Beam Station too? Not a million miles away...
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Old 20th Aug 2017, 3:59 pm   #9
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Default Re: Rampisham: All Gone bar One...

Unfortunately no, not old enough.

Rampisham is memorable as we drive that way to get to Crewkerne when visiting relatives and I quite like looking at masts/towers and their unassuming importance.

Also I'm guessing the last tower will remain (for a while at least) as I guess it's the one that holds the Rampisham UHF relay of Stockland Hil.
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Old 20th Aug 2017, 4:30 pm   #10
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Default Re: Rampisham: All Gone bar One...

I never visited Rampisham, but in the 1990’s did once visit the Marconi labs at Chelmsford where their transmitters were designed and built. I believe that Rampisham had one of the last transmitters that Marconi made before their transmitter department closed. It used a solid-state modulator bought in from an American company. Unfortunately there was a patent dispute relating to the modulator, and although Marconi had an indemnity from the other company, and a settlement was agreed before trial, the uncertainty associated with the litigation put potential clients off and was a contributory factor to the closure of the business. Given what happened to GEC after Weinstock stepped down, it probably wouldn’t have lasted much longer anyway, but it was sad that the transmitter business on which the company was founded, didn't quite make it to the Marconi centenary.
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Old 20th Aug 2017, 4:34 pm   #11
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Default Re: Rampisham: All Gone bar One...

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Also I'm guessing the last tower will remain (for a while at least) as I guess it's the one that holds the Rampisham UHF relay of Stockland Hil.
The Hook relay? I suspect the last mast has implications for future planning permission if it were felled, and has been deemed expedient to keep.
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Old 20th Aug 2017, 4:46 pm   #12
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Default Re: Rampisham: All Gone bar One...

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I believe that Rampisham had one of the last transmitters that Marconi made before their transmitter department closed. It used a solid-state modulator bought in from an American company.
The B6127s ended up with solid-state modulators and the B6128s were modified with Continental 'pyrotechnic' solid-state modulators. Same as Droitwich on the B6042s. In general, a HF sender is 'never as good as the one that preceded it' but I believe the RMP 6128s were the exception to this rule. All gone now.
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Old 20th Aug 2017, 8:29 pm   #13
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Default Re: Rampisham: All Gone bar One...

Does the reference to "pyrotechnic" imply that they were prone to spectacular catastrophic failure? The Continental modulators used an ingenious patented digital design where the output operated in steps of I think 600V and the desired output signal would be maintained automatically without operator intervention even if several of the individual 600V stages failed.
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Old 20th Aug 2017, 10:31 pm   #14
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Default Re: Rampisham: All Gone bar One...

There were initial problems with fire-related failure, yes. I'm told there were burn-ups on the 700V SMPSU panels, but such problems were ironed out.

I understand the solid-state modulators on the older B6127 transmitters (not sure if these were Brown-Boveri or Continental) suffered several capacitor-related fires. On the whole, though, the SSMs were more reliable than the old 'grid-boxes' (valve switching units). Fortunately, we at Skelton acquired all Rampisham's old grid-boxes and this gave us a little breathing space under fault conditions. Marconi actually supplied us with redesigned timer and driver PCBs and along with our locally-implemented mods, meant that at cessation of broadcasting on 31 march 2013, we had a full complement of working grid-boxes.
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Old 21st Aug 2017, 10:34 am   #15
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Default Re: Rampisham: All Gone bar One...

I could see those antennas from here, sad day. When I got my ham radio licence in the early '80s I used to be part of a net on the SN repeater, the transmitter at rampisham was causing QRN on 145.725, as I am some distance from SN it was almost blocking my signal, I found a phone number for Rampisham, gave them a ring and explained my plight, believe it or not they shut the transmitter down and retuned it, didn't make any difference but can you imagine that happening today!

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Old 21st Aug 2017, 11:28 am   #16
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Default Re: Rampisham: All Gone bar One...

Thanks for the clarification. B6128 does ring a bell: I recalled that the step voltage was several hundred volts, but didn't remember the exact figure. I wondered about "pyrotechnic", because one of the engineers I met at Marconi told me that one of the transmitters they had supplied to Egypt had been pretty well completely destroyed by fire. He said that normally a fire would have been quickly extinguished using a fire extinguisher before causing much damage, but because some of the younger technicians had been caught playing with the extinguishers, a manager had had them locked up (the extinguishers, not the technicians!). When the fire started, the key could not be found, and the fire got out of control.

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Old 21st Aug 2017, 11:30 am   #17
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Default Re: Rampisham: All Gone bar One...

Quote:
Originally Posted by russell_w_b View Post
Do you remember the Dorchester Beam Station too? Not a million miles away...
Yes, I can just recall it. I seem to recall that it became a printing works later and a friend of mine worked there. Apparently the place had some interesting cellars which he explored.
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Old 21st Aug 2017, 10:02 pm   #18
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Default Re: Rampisham: All Gone bar One...

Here're are a couple I took earlier.

Twenty-seven years earlier...
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Old 22nd Aug 2017, 9:22 am   #19
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Default Re: Rampisham: All Gone bar One...

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Also I'm guessing the last tower will remain (for a while at least) as I guess it's the one that holds the Rampisham UHF relay of Stockland Hil.
The Hooke UHF relay was at the bottom of the field, and I don't know what's happened to it. Maybe it was remounted on a wooden pole?

I'm told the remaining tower at RMP is used for a mobile telephone network base-station.
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Old 22nd Aug 2017, 10:19 am   #20
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Default Re: Rampisham: All Gone bar One...

Lovely to see electronics on such a large level. The guys changing those coils must've had good faith in the isolators.
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