Mast of Titahi Bay transmitterMast of Titahi Bay transmitter
The Titahi Bay Transmitter, which until 16 February 2016 was New Zealand's second tallest structure, transmitted AM radio signals from a 220 metres tall radio mast insulated against ground at Titahi Bay in New Zealand.[1] The station which previously had three masts, now consists of only one mast with a height of 137 metres.[2] A third – smaller – mast with a height of 53 metres was toppled on 10 November 2015. The tower's surrounding buildings were opened in 1937.[3] Five radio programmes broadcast on four frequencies from the tower:
In 2004 the tower was refurnished, badly corroded parts were removed and replaced, the whole tower was sand-blasted and repainted, and an array of LED warning lights were added at the behest of the NZCAA.
According to workers refurbishing it, scaling the tower takes 45 minutes. From the top there are views of the entire Kapiti coast region.
The site formerly transmitted Radio New Zealand's shortwave service, these broadcasts used a series of shorter free-standing masts supporting curtain arrays.
Under the right conditions, the AM signal for National Radio can be received as far north as Norfolk Island and as far south as Dunedin.
The Department of Conservation owns the land surrounding the tower, which is leased to Radio NZ for the transmitting towers, to the local Titahi Golf Club, and as farm land. The site is located within Whitirea Park, and is planned[by whom?] to come under the control of the Greater Wellington Regional Council.
Only in recent years[when?] has the station's emergency power generator been replaced. The previous one, supplied by the American military after the Second World War, formed part of the driving machinery of a submarine which was no longer required.
The site was never used for overseas telephone links, which (before the advent of undersea cables and satellites) were provided by two New Zealand Post Office radio stations, Makara Radio (receiving) west of Wellington and Himatangi radio station (transmitting) near Himatangi Beach. Only a limited number of voice circuits were available, and overseas toll calls were expensive.
Demolition
On 14 October 2015, it was announced that the tallest tower (220 metres) would be removed by March 2016, due to health and safety concerns caused by corrosion issues.[4] The smallest tower (53 metres) was demolished on 10 November 2015.[5] On 16 February 2016, the tallest tower was demolished.[6]
The remaining 137m-high mast is now responsible for all transmitting duties.
Porirua, a city in the Wellington Region of the North Island of New Zealand, is one of the four cities that constitute the Wellington metropolitan area. The name 'Porirua' is a corruption of 'Pari-rua', meaning "the tide sweeping up both reaches". It almost completely surrounds Porirua Harbour at the southern end of the Kapiti Coast. As of June 2022, Porirua had a population of 60,200.
OMEGA was the first global-range radio navigation system, operated by the United States in cooperation with six partner nations. It was a hyperbolic navigation system, enabling ships and aircraft to determine their position by receiving very low frequency (VLF) radio signals in the range 10 to 14 kHz, transmitted by a global network of eight fixed terrestrial radio beacons, using a navigation receiver unit. It became operational around 1971 and was shut down in 1997 in favour of the Global Positioning System.
The Warsaw Radio Mast was a radio mast located near Gąbin, Poland, and the world's tallest structure at 2120 ft from 1974 until its collapse on 8 August 1991. The mast was conceived for height and ability to broadcast the "propaganda of the Communist successes" across the world and even to remote areas such as Antarctica. As of 2023, it was the third-tallest structure ever built, after the Burj Khalifa tower in the United Arab Emirates in 2009 and Merdeka 118 tower in Malaysia in 2022.
Sender Zehlendorf or Zehlendorf (radio) transmission facility was a radio transmission facility which was in service since 1936, when a short wave transmitter was built on the occasion of the Berlin 1936 Summer Olympics in Zehlendorf as part of the establishment of permanent radio services. This Zehlendorf site, which until the end of World War II was referred to as the Rehmate Radio Transmission Centre, had 26 different antennas at the time.
The longwave transmitter Raszyn is a longwave broadcasting transmitter near Raszyn, Poland. It was built in 1949. The designer of the mast is unknown. It has been claimed that it was built of sections from radio mast of former Deutschlandsender Herzberg/Elster; however, there is no proof of this theory. The mast of the Raszyn longwave transmitter was, at inauguration, the second-tallest man-made structure on earth and until 1962, with a height of 335 metres, the tallest structure in Europe. The tower's height is 1,099 feet.
The Longwave transmitter Europe 1 is the oldest privately owned radio station in Germany, situated between Felsberg and Berus/Saar, Germany. It transmitted on 183 kHz with a power of 2,000 kilowatts a French speaking programme, Europe 1 toward France. It was the highest power radio broadcasting transmitter in Germany. Longwave transmissions stopped on 31 December 2019.
The Burghead transmitting station is a broadcasting facility near Burghead in Scotland for long wave and medium wave radio transmission that started service on 12 October 1936. The site is owned by Arqiva and houses a long wave radio transmitter on 198 kHz broadcasting BBC Radio 4 and two medium wave radio transmitters, broadcasting BBC Radio 5 Live on 693 kHz and BBC Radio Scotland on 810 kHz. The long wave transmitter is part of a network transmitting on the same frequency, the other transmitters being Droitwich and Westerglen.
Rugby Radio Station was a large radio transmission facility just east of the Hillmorton area of the town of Rugby, Warwickshire in England. The site straddled the A5 trunk road, with most of it in Warwickshire, and part on the other side of the A5 in Northamptonshire. First opened in 1926, at its height in the 1950s it was the largest radio transmitting station in the world, with a total of 57 radio transmitters, covering an area of 1,600 acres (650 ha). Traffic slowly dwindled from the 1980s onwards, and the site was closed between 2003 and 2007.
The Skelton Transmitting Station is a radio transmitter site at grid reference NY433376 near Skelton, Cumbria, England, about 5 miles (8 km) north-west of Penrith, run by Babcock International and owned by the Ministry of Defence. Since the Belmont Mast in Lincolnshire was shortened in 2010, the mast at Skelton has been the tallest structure in the United Kingdom.
The Cremlingen transmitter is a large mediumwave transmission facility established in 1962 for transmitting the programme of Deutschlandfunk on 756 kHz near Cremlingen-Abbenrode. It was also known as Sender Braunschweig or Sender Königslutter.
The Lakihegy Tower is a 314-metre-high (1,031 ft) radio mast at Szigetszentmiklós-Lakihegy in Hungary. The Blaw-Knox type tower was built in 1933 and was one of Europe's tallest structures at the time of construction. It was designed to provide broadcast coverage for Hungary with a 120 kW transmitter. It was built for the purpose of transmitting the radio station "Budapest I.", which it served until 1977.
Tītahi Bay, a suburb of Porirua in the North Island of New Zealand, lies at the foot of a short peninsula on the west coast of the Porirua Harbour, to the north of Porirua city centre.
Woodside Omega Transmitter near Woodside, Victoria, Australia, was a transmission tower that was completed in 1982 and demolished in 2015. Until its demolition, it was the tallest object in the Southern Hemisphere.
The Lichfield transmitting station is situated close to Tamworth in Staffordshire in the West Midlands between the A5 and A51. The nearest geographical feature is Hopwas Hill. The station is owned and operated by Arqiva. The mast is known locally as Hopwas mast or Hints mast.
New Zealand Masts and Towers range in size from short flagpoles to high radio transmitter antenna structures. The highest mast is in Titahi Bay, being the highest structure in the Southern Hemisphere at time of construction. Later it became the highest in New Zealand and then later second to the Sky Tower in Auckland.
The Wiederau transmitter is the oldest broadcasting facility in Saxony. It is located near Wiederau, a village which is part of the municipality of Pegau, and is used for medium-wave, FM and Television broadcasting.
Marnach transmitter was a broadcasting facility of RTL near Marnach in the commune of Clervaux, in northern Luxembourg. The Marnach transmitter was built in 1955 for improving the transmission of the English-speaking program on 1439 kHz, which was transmitted from 1951 with an omnidirectional antenna from Junglinster, to the British Isles and for a better transmission on this frequency to Germany at daytime. Therefore, it was given a directional antenna with a switchable directional characteristic pointing North-northeast towards the Rhine-Ruhr area, Germany's most populated area, and West-northwest in the direction of the UK. This antenna was implemented in form of a directional antenna consisting of three ground-fed 105-metre tall guyed mast antennas arranged in the form of an isosceles triangle with a 90 degree angle. As transmitters, two 100 kW units switched in parallel were used when it went in service in December 1955.
VLF transmitter Lualualei is a facility of the United States Navy near Lualualei, Hawaii transmitting orders to submerged submarines in the very low frequency (VLF) range.
The Start Point transmitting station is a broadcasting facility at Start Point, Devon, owned by Arqiva. The site is just north-west of the Start Point lighthouse.
Whitireia Park is a headland north of Titahi Bay and Te Awarua-o-Porirua Harbour in Porirua, in the Wellington Region at the southern end of New Zealand's North Island. It is a regional park administered by Wellington Regional Council.
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