Mansfield radio station hit by 'winker' song hijacker

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Mansfield radio station hit by 'winker' song hijacker

Post by tokingmenace » Tue Jul 11, 2017 6:55 pm


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Re: Mansfield radio station hit by 'winker' song hijacker

Post by pirateaddict » Tue Jul 11, 2017 7:42 pm

Lol...I've had to download it today for the laugh... It might be something to do with the geezer or geezers that did radio Arthur back in the miners strike days!
Ofcom said something about it would take a lot of technical knowledge to do this, walob! Someone is either breaking into their link or are using 30 watts and tx'ing from a higher plain...Interference? No, they doing the peeps of Mansfield a big favour..

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Re: Mansfield radio station hit by 'winker' song hijacker

Post by tokingmenace » Tue Jul 11, 2017 10:04 pm

Tx coverage map: http://static.ofcom.org.uk/static/radio ... 000226.pdf

Tx site pic: http://tx.mb21.co.uk/gallery/mansfield.php

Guessing they are a community station on around 30w, as coverage not massive.

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Re: Mansfield radio station hit by 'winker' song hijacker

Post by Albert H » Fri Jul 14, 2017 3:51 am

"Radio Arthur" came from a number of very high sites with quite a lot of power. Two or three of the rigs were valved jobs. They were used to "replace" the BBC local news in several mining areas. Judge Dread and Ivor Biggun songs were frequently used to give everyone a bit of a laugh.

None of the Radio Arthur gear was ever found. The rigs were later re-used by a couple of well-known big London stations during the days when there were all those rigs up at Crystal Palace!
"Why is my rig humming?"
"Because it doesn't know the words!"
;)

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Re: Mansfield radio station hit by 'winker' song hijacker

Post by Giggles » Fri Jul 14, 2017 8:31 am

I counted 8 stations in palace 5 weeks ago when i was there seems like stations are going back there now then.

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Re: Mansfield radio station hit by 'winker' song hijacker

Post by radionortheast » Fri Jul 14, 2017 9:55 am

don't know what someone would get out of this to be honest, such a small radio station, should of least broadcast some war of the worlds if your going to take over a station

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Re: Mansfield radio station hit by 'winker' song hijacker

Post by pirateaddict » Fri Jul 14, 2017 1:55 pm

@radionortheast.. I think it was just for the buzz plus i don't think it's possible to break into the big station links. Could be wrong though! If i had the knowledge i could possibly link up with 103.1 in Sheffield. I know where the studio is and have seen the vertical link aerial on the side of the building so i know where the tx is.. But would it be some sort of coded link or could I just run through frequencies with a link box to turn on the rig? If any of that makes any sense I'll be surprised! Lol...

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Re: Mansfield radio station hit by 'winker' song hijacker

Post by pirateaddict » Fri Jul 14, 2017 1:57 pm

@Albert h. I always wondered what happened to arthurs rigs.. Cheers!

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Re: Mansfield radio station hit by 'winker' song hijacker

Post by radionortheast » Fri Jul 14, 2017 7:00 pm

think its just the humour i'm not kean of having listened to it, would of been better with russ abbot's folk song would of made more of a point. wonder what his grievance was, guess will never know, sometimes humour can be a good coping mechanism other times when someones really mad it dosen't work!.

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Re: Mansfield radio station hit by 'winker' song hijacker

Post by Maximus » Sat Jul 15, 2017 12:32 pm

Haha! War of the worlds was my dad's intro and outro song when doing Sunday broadcasts.


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Re: Mansfield radio station hit by 'winker' song hijacker

Post by radionortheast » Sun Jul 16, 2017 9:53 am

Maximus wrote: Sat Jul 15, 2017 12:32 pm Haha! War of the worlds was my dad's intro and outro song when doing Sunday broadcasts.
haha anything to do with the war of the worlds is cool, always liked it, dad always liked it too and jean michel jarre, i’ve only gotten into now, even vangelis, some ways dads are always right, learn to apprieate things more as you get older and diversify, have time for things you once didn’t have.

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Re: Mansfield radio station hit by 'winker' song hijacker

Post by Mike Volume » Sat Jul 29, 2017 11:36 am

Albert H wrote: Fri Jul 14, 2017 3:51 am "Radio Arthur" came from a number of very high sites with quite a lot of power. Two or three of the rigs were valved jobs.
I recall some photos of one on another website.

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Re: Mansfield radio station hit by 'winker' song hijacker

Post by 16alpha » Tue Aug 01, 2017 5:05 pm

Not Radio Arthur transmitters causing interference to Mansfield,the transmitters are no longer,the low power stages of the VHF tx were sold off to a Nottingham Pirate in 1990,the 3500 watt mediumwave TX was dismantled,only the VHF 800 watt P.A is complete, one of the tx engineers has since died.No judge dread or Iver bigun was ever transmitted by Radio Arthur.

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Re: Mansfield radio station hit by 'winker' song hijacker

Post by Albert H » Wed Aug 02, 2017 3:55 am

I have a tape (somewhere in the cellar) of the now dead transmitter engineer running a cassette of ribald stuff through the Arthur FM rig as a test very late one night. You might remember that the BBC local stations would frequently rebroadcast "You, The Night and The Music" from Radio 2. The test was to ascertain if it was possible to clobber the BBC over a reasonable area. It proved that 800 (ish) Watts wasn't enough to take out the BBC local, but was more than enough to obliterate the local commercial station over a substantial area. The engineer involved was severely censured by the others, as they didn't want to draw unwelcome attention. Incidentally, he'd been told that the field strength of the BBC local was much too high for them to overcome in any significant area.

Two "Arthur" tapes (possibly off-air recordings) were broadcast in Kent from a site near to Deal a couple of times, using about 600 Watts to flatten BBC Medway (or it might have been BBC Kent by then). The rig was installed and set up to use a timeswitch for unattended jamming. As far as I'm aware, it was only used a few times, and the rig ended up in Portugal on one of the pop stations down there.
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"Because it doesn't know the words!"
;)

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Re: Mansfield radio station hit by 'winker' song hijacker

Post by 16alpha » Wed Aug 02, 2017 5:36 am

BBC radio Nottingham had a smaller tx power than Trent and would have been much easier to block,Trent targeted due to them repeatedly saying all Notts pits working normally which they wasn't and also to rebalance the biased news.FM overriding uses capture effect so the strongest signal takes over,The BBC in Notts never overridden or tried to be by RA.Not aware of Kent transmissions but not RA.

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Re: Mansfield radio station hit by 'winker' song hijacker

Post by 16alpha » Wed Aug 02, 2017 7:35 am

Albert I notice you say RA used two or three valve rigs,for your info the mediumwave tx used a slumberger synthersizer feeding a transistor amp feeding a modified T1154 (ex Lancaster bomber tx) feeding a 3CX3000 pa with 4500 ht at 1 amp 4.5 Kilowatts in approx. 3500 watts out Plate modulated.The VHF used initialy a transistor tx feeding a QQV06-40 or something similar feeding a TY5-500 pa.The first stage was altered and replaced by a synthersized tx due to frequency stability problems. Many myths exist about RA no censorship by the "others" who ever they may be ever happened in fact security was maintained and few people knew at the time who how when or where it was being done, usually two transmissions of up to 30 mins and that's why they didn't get caught, ,no support was received from the national union.It was originaly thought that the landline had been tampered with(that info came from a conversation I had with a Radio investigation bod in fact he said they knew the persons concerned and had observed them)however if you listen to the first broadcast you can hear the slight hetrodine.The deceased engineer was an electrician at Gedling Colliery who was on strike 1984/5 and R.A.B died in Nottingham Queens Med of liver cancer .I visited him every day during his last few weeks and I was with him the day before he died .We had been friends for approx. 50 years and had many a conversation about RA.As regards the other engineer no doubt he will tell his story one day.As regards the Mansfield station all links have a sub carrier running to prevent the link being over powered,this came about after a BBC tx on the lsle of Wight was taken over sometime in the 60s or 70s before that security feature was added.This sub carrier is I believe in the 5 to 8 kHz range but could also be in the very low audio frequencies below 300 hertz and is filtered out before the transmitters modulator.So now you know how to get at the link,only problem would be finding the sub carrier frequency.

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Re: Mansfield radio station hit by 'winker' song hijacker

Post by Albert H » Thu Aug 03, 2017 2:49 am

The first Rowridge transmitter abuse was done by an ex-BBC bod called Bob D......... He also inserted a couple of TV items into ITN's "News At Ten" with the assistance of an ITN editor (Peter H...........) The "News At Ten" escapade grabbed control of a lot of the west country TV rigs since Rowridge was used as a donor site for loads of others! The news story was about space aliens landing in the West Country and was accompanied by video of Army manoeuvres on Salisbury Plain - which was described as the Army "containing" the situation. The spoof item fitted perfectly over the legitimate news item, so many viewers thought that it was genuine!

The control tone was added to BBC rigs as a reliability measure. Early repeaters used a crude "vox" circuit, and extended periods of low modulation could cause them to switch off. The 25Hz control tone approach was installed to replace the vox-switches, and was simple enough - it just used an NE567 tone decoder IC to detect the tone and pull in an "enable" relay. The control tone was adequately filtered out by the 50Hz hum filters in the audio path.

The bloke that I used to know - who provided parts for the big FM rig - built the PLL bit and tested that it worked OK with the first bottle running in the same box. I remember hearing his tests, which - I can assure you - had some pretty "blue" content!
"Why is my rig humming?"
"Because it doesn't know the words!"
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Re: Mansfield radio station hit by 'winker' song hijacker

Post by 16alpha » Thu Aug 03, 2017 6:31 pm

You are wrong Albert,the synth for the VHF was a commercialy built unit,if I recall it was a Taylor unit,however I can check cos I have it.

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Re: Mansfield radio station hit by 'winker' song hijacker

Post by drumandbasshead010 » Fri Aug 04, 2017 12:59 pm

Albert H wrote: Thu Aug 03, 2017 2:49 am The first Rowridge transmitter abuse was done by an ex-BBC bod called Bob D......... He also inserted a couple of TV items into ITN's "News At Ten" with the assistance of an ITN editor (Peter H...........) The "News At Ten" escapade grabbed control of a lot of the west country TV rigs since Rowridge was used as a donor site for loads of others! The news story was about space aliens landing in the West Country and was accompanied by video of Army manoeuvres on Salisbury Plain - which was described as the Army "containing" the situation. The spoof item fitted perfectly over the legitimate news item, so many viewers thought that it was genuine!

The control tone was added to BBC rigs as a reliability measure. Early repeaters used a crude "vox" circuit, and extended periods of low modulation could cause them to switch off. The 25Hz control tone approach was installed to replace the vox-switches, and was simple enough - it just used an NE567 tone decoder IC to detect the tone and pull in an "enable" relay. The control tone was adequately filtered out by the 50Hz hum filters in the audio path.

The bloke that I used to know - who provided parts for the big FM rig - built the PLL bit and tested that it worked OK with the first bottle running in the same box. I remember hearing his tests, which - I can assure you - had some pretty "blue" content!
So the highjacking of News At 10 about an alien invasion or whatever was an inside job? Have seen a lot of speculation about it online. Happened around 1977 and lasted 10 minutes or so apparently.

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Re: Mansfield radio station hit by 'winker' song hijacker

Post by 16alpha » Fri Aug 04, 2017 3:45 pm

What I was referring to was the highjacking of a VHF tx on the I.O.W didn't know about the tele thing,and there is a security tone with the audio link to the VHF transmitters in the high KHz area.,I would be somewhat sceptical about a 25hz tone as to remove it would be exceedingly difficult particulary back in the 70s or 80s.

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