Location | Macclesfield, Cheshire |
---|---|
Coordinates | 53°12′22″N2°06′03″W / 53.206129°N 2.100728°W |
Grid reference | SJ9327467710 |
Built | 1960s |
Sutton Common BT Tower is a 72-metre (238-foot)[ citation needed ] radio tower built of reinforced concrete at Macclesfield, Cheshire, England. Sutton Common was originally conceived as part of the 1950s 'Backbone' chain designed to provide the UK and NATO with survivable communications during nuclear war. [1]
The tower stands near the summit of Croker Hill on the western edge of the Peak District national park. Sutton relays signals to Heaton Park in the north and Pye Green to the south. For survivability during a nuclear war, the Backbone towers are some of the few communication towers in the United Kingdom built of reinforced concrete.
A wind farm was proposed on land adjacent to the transmitter but was objected to for various reasons, including the possible effects of turbine blades on the fixed link. [2]
Frequency | kW [3] | Service |
---|---|---|
96.4 MHz | 0.250 | Greatest Hits Radio Staffordshire & Cheshire |
106.9 MHz | 0.300 | Silk Radio |
Frequency | Block | kW | Operator |
---|---|---|---|
220.352 MHz | 12C | 0.5 | Manchester |
229.072 MHz | 12D | 0.5 | Stoke & Stafford |
BT Group plc is a British multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered in London, England. It has operations in around 180 countries and is the largest provider of fixed-line, broadband and mobile services in the UK, and also provides subscription television and IT services.
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Pye Green BT Tower is a 96.9 metres (318 ft) tall telecommunication tower built of reinforced concrete at Pye Green, Staffordshire, England. Standing on the far southern edge of Cannock Chase, it is one of fourteen telecommunication towers in the United Kingdom built of reinforced concrete. Pye Green was constructed as part of the British Cold War "Backbone" radio communications network.
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Heaton Park BT Tower is a 238 foot tall telecommunication tower built of reinforced concrete close to the banks of Heaton Park Reservoir, at Heaton Park, Manchester, England. Heaton Park BT Tower is one of the few British towers built of reinforced concrete, and one of seven BT towers of the 'Chilterns' design.
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Charwelton BT Tower is a telecommunication tower built of reinforced concrete at Charwelton near Byfield, Northamptonshire, England. It is 118 metres (387 ft) tall and one of the few British towers built of reinforced concrete. It is a landmark for miles around.
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Tolsford Hill BT Tower is a telecommunication tower built of reinforced concrete at Tolsford Hill on the North Downs near Folkestone, Kent. Tolsford Hill BT Tower is one of the few British towers built of reinforced concrete and is 67.36 metres high.
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Microwave transmission is the transmission of information by electromagnetic waves with wavelengths in the microwave frequency range of 300 MHz to 300 GHz of the electromagnetic spectrum. Microwave signals are normally limited to the line of sight, so long-distance transmission using these signals requires a series of repeaters forming a microwave relay network. It is possible to use microwave signals in over-the-horizon communications using tropospheric scatter, but such systems are expensive and generally used only in specialist roles.
The British Telecom microwave network was a network of point-to-point microwave radio links in the United Kingdom, operated at first by the General Post Office, and subsequently by its successor BT plc. From the late 1950s to the 1980s it provided a large part of BT's trunk communications capacity, and carried telephone, television and radar signals and digital data, both civil and military. Its use of line-of-sight microwave transmission was particularly important during the Cold War for its resilience against nuclear attack. It was rendered obsolete, at least for normal civilian purposes, by the installation of a national optical fibre communication network with considerably higher reliability and vastly greater capacity.