Long gone

[Martin Wynne]

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This is an interesting video for me. As a boy in the 1950s I remember being taken to BBC open days at the Wychbold transmitter site. They were very popular and I remember crowds of folks and queues to get in. There were neatly-kept flower beds and lawns alongside the driveway up to the main building. Inside I remember lots of varnished wood and polished brass. I remember being told that the long wave transmitter was the most powerful in the world so that it could broadcast the shipping forecast to ships at sea. Long wave is now on its last legs and will soon be gone.

This is Droitwich Spa in the early 1980s. The two Wychbold long wave masts can just be seen in the distance. They are visible over a wide area in this part of the world:

Martin.

 

[Rob Manchester]

Hi Martin,
Nice video - another one I wouldn't have even thought of searching for. There are quite a few interesting topicson his Youtube channel - lots of clever people come from Manchester

I have always had a liking for this line. Quite a few models of parts of it have appeared over the years.

Rob

 

[Bunchie3174]

I remember the ones at Criggion. Wychbold are my nearest and always looked closer to me than they are. There's also some at Wooferton. Always impressive. My childhood memory is passing the ones at Rugby on the WCML.

 

[AndyB]

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This is an interesting video for me. As a boy in the 1950s I remember being taken to BBC open days at the Wychbold transmitter site. They were very popular and I remember crowds of folks and queues to get in. There were neatly-kept flower beds and lawns alongside the driveway up to the main building. Inside I remember lots of varnished wood and polished brass. I remember being told that the long wave transmitter was the most powerful in the world so that it could broadcast the shipping forecast to ships at sea. Long wave is now on its last legs and will soon be gone.

Martin.

I wonder why the masts had to be so far apart?
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Oh! Wait a minute.

I believe there is also some ultra-long wave comms stuff but the bandwidth is so limited it's much, much slower than Morse code.

 

[Jim Guthrie]

Brings back some memories. I started work with the BBC in 1960 at Broadcasting House in London in Technical Operations in the wartime control room way down in the sub basement in BH - almost at the same level as the Northern Line and you could hear the tubes at quiet periods.

Wartime Control Room

One of the jobs on night shift was to feed Droitwich with the shipping forecast. In those days, all UK programmes closed down at around midnight so Droitwich was fed via a bay in the Control Room and after Light Programme close down, the Shipping Forecast originated in a studio in BH and was fed to Droitwich via the bay. When finished, Droitwich was then fed Green Service from Bush house (BBC English Language World Service) and the bay was switched out of the feed.

Control Room Bays.

The Control Room has also long gone, being replaced by a modern Control room in 1962 (IIRC). By that time I had moved to BBC Glasgow. But the Control Room had an extremely low engineering and operational fault record. The equipment was BBC designed pre-WW2 and was absolutely bullet proof, and the opportunities for operational c*ckups was so great with the plug and cord jackfields that no-one took chances, so no mistakes were made.

And the announcers for the Shipping Forecast were still the wartime "names", like Frank Phillips, Alvar Liddell and John Snagge. I remember doing the Christmas forecast with Frank Phillips reading it. The forecast normally took about eight to ten minutes, but on Christmas morning 1960, it ran for almost twice the length with a lot of mic mute operation to cover the glass clinks.

Jim.