Aerial photography - Ancient Gallery

This is in Wensleydale, in the Yorkshire Dales. Before the advent of the Wensleydale relay (and later, Bilsdale) the Dales struggled to receive television. Transmitters in use included Holme Moss, Emley Moor, Winter Hill, Sandale, Caldbeck, Pontop Pike and Burnhope. A little historical oddity is that the channel 13 BBC TV relay for the adjacent dale, Swaledale, was planned to come into service in 1969, but of course by then the conversion to UHF 625 lines was well underway, and the station was never built.

On this picture the uppermost aerial is looking at Pontop Pike BBC-TV (channel 5 horizontal polarisation). Most arrays with three or more elements had a folded dipole to provide accurate matching to the downlead, but not this one, for some reason. The next aerial down used Winter Hill (Granada channel 9 vertical). The two-element VHF FM radio aerial seems to have swung round in the wind. It is mounted on a Belling Lee cast aluminium chimney bracket with a blacksmith-made adapter for pole mounting, and this is now loose on the pole. The aerial would I think have been originally aligned on Holme Moss, just a few degrees east of Winter Hill.

The close up shot shows the blacksmith-made bracketry, and on the right a rubber bush of the type often used in those days to hold 2 inch diameter masts.

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