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Vintage Telephony and Telecomms Vintage Telephones, Telephony and Telecomms Equipment |
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14th Jun 2020, 5:48 pm | #81 |
Octode
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Bracknell, Berkshire,UK.
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Re: BT 'Chiltern' telecom towers
Not sure if this one has been mentioned yet in this thread. This is Harold Weald in Harrow, the first in the line of towers out from the BT Tower. I passed it last year while walking the London Loop. The guide book suggested there were all sorts of aerials on it but as you can see they have now been all but a few removed and it is a bare skeleton.
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15th Jun 2020, 10:11 pm | #82 | |
Tetrode
Join Date: Mar 2019
Location: York, North Yorkshire, UK.
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Re: BT 'Chiltern' telecom towers
Quote:
Post Office / BT planning imperatives were to ensure best value for (public) money and reliability over the long term. The concrete towers had a more important driver then pure aesthetics. In the long term, they were cheaper. Steel lattice towers need constant maintenance, while poured concrete ones need relatively little. It's true that TV signals could be carried by inter-city coaxial circuits, but these were a very expensive option. A microwave link with a repeater station about every 25 miles was considerably cheaper than the civil engineering costs of digging in high quality deep-buried cable ducts, plus the need for buried and power-fed broadband repeaters every 1000 yards to provide the bandwidth at an acceptable signal to noise ratio (analogue, remember - digital cable systems came a bit later). Microwave links are free from being dug up by careless JCB operators. This is still an issue, but digital optical cable systems are much better suited to multiple diverse routing. The cost per bit is also much, much less on optical cables, hence microwave links have moved into a much smaller and specialist niche.
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15th Jun 2020, 11:58 pm | #83 |
Dekatron
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Location: Heckmondwike, West Yorkshire, UK.
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Re: BT 'Chiltern' telecom towers
Not just civils, although they are very expensive. Private wayleaves can be problematic too, which is why utilities are constantly digging up roads.
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16th Jun 2020, 11:49 am | #84 |
Tetrode
Join Date: Mar 2019
Location: York, North Yorkshire, UK.
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Re: BT 'Chiltern' telecom towers
Wayleaves have always been difficult. Large landowners are often inclined to be stubborn and well connected.
I always suspected the early planning emphasis on military and "Defence of the Realm" needs was played as a massive lever to clear objections to infrastructure projects. As much as anything, it's this which kicked off the conspiracy theories, I think.
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16th Jun 2020, 12:29 pm | #85 |
Moderator
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Re: BT 'Chiltern' telecom towers
At the risk of going round in circles, there has always been an urgent need for communications between radar stations and command centres, dating all the way back to Fighter Command in the Battle of Britain. By the mid 50s the MOD was seriously considering fighting a long term WW2 style war against the USSR, with manned bomber raids carrying nuclear weapons. It was vital that air defence radar plots could be processed in real time so that the bombers could be intercepted before reaching their targets.
I now think I was peripherally involved in a huge project to replace the microwave based UK Air Defence Ground Environment with a new fibre optic based system in the mid 90s. I had very limited security clearance so had no overview of the planned system, just my tiny bit of it. They were trying to work out how to use OSI rather than TCP/IP or proprietary protocols for the networking. |
17th Jun 2020, 10:25 am | #86 |
Dekatron
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Location: St. Frajou, l'Isle en Dodon, Haute Garonne, France.(Previously: Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, UK.)
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Re: BT 'Chiltern' telecom towers
Hi,
This is a fascinating thread as I've always wondered about those concrete towers. There are similar ones here in France, a couple of which are visible in the distance when travelling along the autoroute between Toulouse and Carcassonne. I presume they have a similar purpose, if not a similar history. When we lived in the UK we were about 15 miles from Pale Heights near Delamere forest, another tower that I found interesting. We lived very near the 'Mysterious Tower' at the Capenhurst nuclear reprocessing plant. Always wondered about that one too!, and read many articles about it. Wonderful stuff! Cheers, Pete.
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17th Jun 2020, 2:22 pm | #87 |
Pentode
Join Date: Oct 2017
Location: Newton-le-Willows, Merseyside, UK.
Posts: 158
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Re: BT 'Chiltern' telecom towers
I have a friend who worked in radio comms for a while, he mentioned these to me and said something about them being for military use amongst other things. As others have said they were designed to still function after a nuclear blast, iirc some of them had a 'sacrificial' concrete outer which would take the blast and although being damaged would protect the inner, a bit like peeling a banana. I also seem to remember him saying something about the 'chain' would function with certain 'links' missing. Another interesting one I learned earlier today was that the old telephone exchange in the middle of town near me, a building consisting of about 6 floors, not only had the gpo stuff on a couple of floors, but a couple were also occupied by people from the government for military comms, it's suprising what you find out when you start talking to certain people.
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17th Jun 2020, 2:55 pm | #88 |
Moderator
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Location: Oxford, UK
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Re: BT 'Chiltern' telecom towers
Many of the city centre telephone exchanges built in the 60s have a distinctly hardened appearance.
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17th Jun 2020, 3:04 pm | #89 |
Pentode
Join Date: Oct 2017
Location: Newton-le-Willows, Merseyside, UK.
Posts: 158
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Re: BT 'Chiltern' telecom towers
There's still a lot of the 'secret squirrel' about too. in my local free rag a couple of years back there was an article on some strange tunnels that had been discovered under the town centre. They were quite wide and fairly deep down and the access was quite substantial too, thinking back on it now, they are not far from the old telephone exchange and also their direction of travel is towards it, makes you wonder if the two are connected!
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13th Jul 2020, 3:12 pm | #90 |
Nonode
Join Date: Jan 2016
Location: Stafford, Staffs. UK.
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Re: BT 'Chiltern' telecom towers
Just a follow up on this topic. Saturday, I was in Stafford, now things are getting back to being more normal. We sat outside a cafe opposite the old library entrance. The doorway to the old library has a metal gate which is now kept closed as the library moved.
How is this relevant? Have a look at the photo. On the right hand gate there are silhouettes of images of Cannock Chase. Still has the microwave horns on that, they are long gone in reality. |
13th Jul 2020, 3:24 pm | #91 |
Heptode
Join Date: Oct 2006
Location: Leeds, West Yorkshire, UK.
Posts: 597
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Re: BT 'Chiltern' telecom towers
The Tinshill/Cookridge Tower doesn't even have any dish antennae left. Unless there's some discreet dipoles and yagis lurking up there, it is completely bare. Sad.
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14th Jul 2020, 1:30 pm | #92 |
Dekatron
Join Date: May 2010
Location: Greater Manchester, UK.
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Re: BT 'Chiltern' telecom towers
Looks like the Fire Service used the Heaton Park tower for a training exercise. It's just a mile away from here.
It's the first time I've seen an inside view. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=As8j6duH2CE
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14th Jul 2020, 2:23 pm | #93 |
Heptode
Join Date: Oct 2006
Location: Leeds, West Yorkshire, UK.
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Re: BT 'Chiltern' telecom towers
Not much inside. Just cables and mesh platforms.
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