BBC 648
 Orfordness transmitting station (Suffolk)
|
|
| Location | Orford Ness, Suffolk |
|---|---|
| Coordinates | 52°06′14″N 1°34′34″E / 52.10393°N 1.57614°ECoordinates: 52°06′14″N 1°34′34″E / 52.10393°N 1.57614°E |
| Grid reference | TM4487251146 |
| Built | 1970s |
The Orfordness transmitting station was a major radio broadcasting facility at Orford Ness on the Suffolk coast in the UK. It closed in May 2012 after more than 30 years of service.
The station was designed to transmit powerful mediumwave (AM) signals to much of Europe on two frequencies (648 and 1296 kHz). Built by the British government, the facility passed through various owners after privatisation in 1997. From 2010, it was owned by a large engineering and defence services company, the Babcock International Group. The current owner of the site is a telecommunications company called Cobra Mist Limited, set up in 2015.
Over the years, the Orfordness station carried a variety of radio services. It was best known, particularly in the UK, for transmitting the BBC World Service in English around the clock on 648 kHz from September 1982 until March 2011.
The station's name is written as one word while that of the shingle spit on which it sits is two words.
The site was originally built for an experimental over-the-horizon radar station known as Cobra Mist.
The radar never worked satisfactorily and the project was scrapped in 1973. The site and buildings were taken over in 1975 by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's Communications Engineering Department (still better known by its previous name, the Diplomatic Wireless Service), who installed a 50-kW medium-wave broadcast transmitter. Following successful tests and the installation of further transmitters, from 1978 the site gradually took over responsibility for the BBC's medium-wave services to Europe which had been provided since the Second World War by an FCO transmitting station at Crowborough in Sussex. From September 1982, Orfordness handled all such BBC transmissions. In 1986, the BBC itself took over the running of the site from the FCO, although the latter retained ownership of the station.
...
Wikipedia