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Author Topic: UK HF station south coast.  (Read 1951 times)

Offline Simondo

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UK HF station south coast.
« on: August 09, 2012, 1653 UTC »
Hello all, my first posting.
Greetings from the UK. I don't know if there are any other UK users on here especially in my area.

I live in Portsmouth, south coast of the UK - right at the bottom. Portsmouth is basically a natural harbour and home for the Royal Navy.  Several miles north of the harbour, there is an 400 ft high hill called Portsdown Hill - well know for lots of clandestine activity during WW2 and the cold war era like hollowing out sections of this chalk hill for an oil reservoir/ air raid shelters, having a D-Day command post hollowed out in the hill etc.
On top and along its length there are various defense establishments with a vast array of weird and wonderful antenna - one section is a training school apparently and several other plots are restricted to public access.

My point is, i used to follow the number stations as a hobby. During this time, there was a massive centre fed wire dipole in one of these areas on top of the hill. The wire was strung between 2 lattice girder towers approx. 90 ft high at a guess-probably more. The centre fed wire must have been over 100 ft long and the central feed went down into a small building in a field. It was there way before i started monitoring, during my time, but strangely, was taken down around the same time the Lincolnshire Poacher went off air ( was that about 2008 ???).
Probably total coincidence but, was this dipole used to receive the Poacher ? Was it a relay station seeing the signal broadcast from Cyprus allegedly ? I was wondering if ,by any chance, any local listeners used this forum would know or at least have an educated guess.

ok, thanks alot
Simon
« Last Edit: August 09, 2012, 1748 UTC by Simondo »

Offline Duffer

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Re: UK HF station south coast.
« Reply #1 on: October 21, 2012, 1010 UTC »
Interesting stuff Simon. I'm in Liverpool, so I can't really help. I'll watch this thread though :)

 

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