Winter Hill in danger as fires merge and close in

I live reasonably close to it, didn’t realise people are in there! I’d love to see what a satellite decoder at one of these places look like.

I don't think it will be permanently manned, as in there aren't people who work there every day in it's day to day running.


However being a big site there will be people on site often, either doing projects or maintenance, and also as a base for Arqiva engineers who are I the area. Sutton Coldfield which is a bigger station no one works there permanently but there's an office area which is all hot desks for when people do.

With DSO, then local TV and Com 7 and 8,now 700 clearance I imagine the main transmitter sites have had people working in them most of the time


I'm not sure smoke affects satellite reception, the particles aren't as close together

Nothing very exciting looking !

https://mediasolutions.ericsson.com/cms/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/RX8200-Configuration-Packs.pdf

Emley is Arqiva's national control centre. Winter Hill was the 'North West' regional engineering base in the IBA days, if you'd clicked on the mb21 link I quoted earlier, you'd have found this.

http://tx.mb21.co.uk/features/winter_hill-staff_newsletter/index.php

Not looking good from this picture.

The radio and TV transmitters at Winter Hill in the North West may be about to go quiet for a while 😮 Thank you to everyone from the emergency services working so hard to try and slow it down 🙏🏻🇬🇧 pic.twitter.com/ctCsoVeAYX

— Ashley Tabor-King OBE (@AshleyTaborKing) June 30, 2018

Indeed. Two fires have merged…

http://www.itv.com/news/granada/update/2018-06-30/major-incident-declared-as-winter-hill-scout-moor-fires-merge/

Don't worry Ashley.
As the son of a multimillionaire, I'm sure the mast going off air, meaning your wretched Global Stations pumping out desperately repetitive playlists and losing some revenue for playing out annoying adverts for PPI claims won't damage the bank balance too much.

Plus, there's a clear line of fire in that picture, so if the fire brigade can water bomb the ground after the fire line and upto the tx building, the blaze can be controlled before it becomes uncontrolled.

Can Winter Hill run on an automated basis if any/all staff have to evacuate? I must admit, if I worked there I would not in situ right now.

All UHF transmitters are unattended I believe.

They are indeed unattended, they only have staff on site when maintenance work is being carried out. The only manned transmitter is Emley Moor, which I believe acts as the remote control and monitoring hub for the entire transmitter network.

The main issue is if the fire does reach the transmitter (I believe it's close) it has the potential to do a lot of damage to the transmitting equipment, which could take weeks to repair.

Is there a back-up situation in place, or will the North West have no tv and some radio stations for a few days while a temporary tx is installed?

Not really, Winter Hill has a backup aerial array on the mast but obviously when a fire's involved that will be nocked out with the main one.


Arqiva do have portable backup masts they can quickly put up if required, which won't be as powerful as the main mast but will do the job. The main challenge is that any portable mast needs to be as near the main mast as possible, for the simple reason that everyone's aerials point that way, but the conditions on the ground may make that unfeasible.

Fortunately most people in North Lancs and the lakes use the Lancaster transmitter, or a relay of it, which I believe since DSO is now directly fibre fed for all service rather than relaying Winter Hill, so that will remain on air should anything happen.