Woofferton Shortware Transmitter Site

[Zozo]

Interesting video about Woofferton TX site which I thought others might find it interesting too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vb5EVWuSs-g

[reverend]

I used to have some pictures I took at the Woofferton TX site back in the 1990s but they got lost in a house move at some point.

At the time, the biggest TX there put out 500 kW and with the large 4x4 antenna arrays giving a gain of around 16 dB, this meant the e.r.p. on short wave was 20 MegaWatts. When you consider that few of the short-wave pirates run any more than a couple of hundred watts, and some much less, you have to question whether such high powers were necessary. Then again, if you're trying to overcome malicious jamming then every Watt counts.

Rev

[SamTheDog]

Interesting video about Woofferton TX site which I thought others might find it interesting too.

Interesting stuff.... Certainly a bit more power than the 50 to 250 I have .... Cheers Zozo

[Albert H]

There was a system of transmitters up at Skelton in the late 70s than had an eastward ERP in the region of 190 MW. This was used for World Service, Voice of America and Deutsche Welle at different times of the day.
To effectively jam a shortwave signal requires a huge amount of power - at one time the Soviets were using over 30% of all their generated electricity to try to jam the western signals aimed at them! This was a pretty effective tactic for the west - the USSR wasted a huge amount of energy, and seldom actually managed to jam the western stations, because they'd often move a few kHz to avoid the jamming!

[nrgkits.nz]

The BBC has recently started up Shortwave broadcasts on 5875 kHz due to the situation in Ukraine and Russian censorship, I believe the transmission is coming from Woofferton. The Russians are going to be wasting all their electricity again if they try to jam it. I wonder what the ERP is, perhaps you might know Albert?

[Albert H]

Rumour has it that the ERP is around 10MW, but the actual figure is subject to the Official Secrets Act.

Apparently, the Germans have a couple of big Short Wave rigs pointed at Russia in the 41m and 49m bands. These are carrying Russian language Deutsche Welle and VOA. I'll find out the frequencies, and let you all know.

Also - Radio Moscow is now silent on several frequencies, so the transmitters are probably going to be re-purposed as jammers.....

[jvok]

I caught the BBC Ukraine broadcast on the Twente websdr the other night and it was unbelievably strong, almost sounded as good as FM. don't think I've ever heard a shortwave broadcast that clear before.