Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Off Topic Farewell, Longwave (UK)

At 1.00 am this morning, after almost 100 years of its broadcasting on Long Wave, I listened as the BBC’s final flourish was to play the National Anthem before completely shutting down its broadcasting on Long Wave (LW) forever.

As I recover this morning, later I can be found winding up my Gramophone.

Ah the end of another era.

The long wave transmitter station at Wychbold has such a significant history. As a newly recruited BBC trainee I was sent to the Engineering Training dept at Evesham and a course there often involved a trip to Wychbold, which wasn’t too far away, to study the transmitters.

We marvelled at the enormous valve bottles that powered the masts. There were also four (if I recall correctly) ships engines there (English Electric I think) that had been redeployed as back up generators in case of power failure.

I can't forget the large fluorescent tube embedded in the wall, which remained alight despite there being no connections to it!

Must have been a while back, when I went to Evesham for broadcast engineering training (1998), the transmitters had been sold off and they didn’t bother to teach us about them.

All the best,

Steve.

Ah yes the memories!
In my case it was 1977, 1981, and 1984 at Evesham, so yes, quite some time ago! There was even a BBC club at the Wychbold site back then.
The old building at Evesham is now a rather nice hotel and most of the site is a retirement village. But there is still a bit of Engineering Training left at the top of the site.

I spent many an evening in the Phoenix Bar, by the time we were finishing our training, the staff used to leave us in there and get us to lock the door when we left!

So much of the BBC is gone now,, sold off due to government and charter requirements, I still do a little contract work based out of W12, never been the same since TVC closed (4th floor club was awesome).

All the best,

Steve.

Yes, I agree, so much has gone. I worked at Ealing to begin with, Lime Grove, TVC, and small outposts in film dept. Then Pebble Mill. Then Bush House. Every one of those buildings has gone, along with so much of the work that went with them.
I’ve just been watching the first episode of a great series about music - For the record- an incomplete history of music. 9 hour long episodes, brilliantly made and inspiring to watch. Is it on the BBC? Sadly not. YouTube. Not the kind of thing the BBC does any more. Really worth a watch.

Whenever I travel out to Webbs' Garden Centre in Wychbold, there's still a large selection of transmission masts to be seen along the A34 between Bromsgrove and Droitwich.

I expect these masts to disappear sometime between 2035 and 2040 when existing DVB-T television broadcasting is switched-off in favour of DVB-IP.

In my youth, during holidays, I would often cycle 17 miles and back to watch Pebble Mill at One being broadcast live at lunchtime - and, on one such visit, filmed Jousting on their front Green with my Canon Super8 camera. Most times, I would watch from just outside the foyer or from the roadside, and on a couple of occasions, I was part of the audience.

For work, I would often travel to BBC Radio WM at Pebble Mill to either arrange for the recording of public service broadcasts or for meetings with senior producers about their outside broadcasts at our Christmas Concerts.

On one occasion, I arrived at BBC Radio WM expecting to record a short broadcast segment for one of our major outside events, only to discover to my unprepared horror that Malcolm Stent was recording an entire half-hour programme solely featuring commentary from me on my work.

(At least the two independent radio stations I also dealt with gave me fair warning on their expectations first before I was interviewed during their live programming).

Sadly, Birmingham Dental Hospital now resides where BBC Pebble Mill once stood.

I can see the BBC Burghead masts from my front door. Been a part of the local horizon for a long time, I wonder what the plan will be with them now?

We used to know a very old local fisherman, long gone now, who remembered them being built in about 1936, herring fishing was on a downturn and the jobs were an injection into the local economy at a time it was really needed.

This has been a nice, nostalgic thread. I'm not sure that I've ever listened to anything on LW but I can imagine it being a big part of other people's formative (& ongoing) listening experiences.

I grew up (illegally) listening to (pirate) Radio Caroline - and then listening to the introduction of Radio One on 247 metres Longwave when affordable/portable transistor radios were first introduced.

Actually Radio 1 247m was a medium wave frequency - 1215khz I think? It was Radio 2, which was formerly the Light Programme - that initially broadcast on 1500m Long Wave from the mast at Droitwich. I grew up around the area and I recall my dad, who listened to the light programme, telling me that people who lived very close to the mast needed attenuators for their receiver set up as the signal was so strong. How that was accomplished on a portable transistor I was never sure. He worked for the then Midlands Electricity Board who not only supplied mains electricity but also had showrooms selling electrical goods, including radios. Those were the days!