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Cobbles on Wincobank Hill, Sheffield


duckweed

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Someone told me that the line of double cobbles had been laid for the BBC Outside Broadcast Van to enable it to pick up the signal from the Snooker at the Crucible.  Is there any truth in this story do you know? There was a gun emplacement there but many people think the cobbles wouldn't be the material they used.  
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Don't know about the cobbles ( but it seems a time consuming method to lay a roadway in the days when asphalt was easily obtained)...but long before the Crucible and snooker the BBC used to have a mobile dish on Wincobank Hill whenever one of our local football teams were on Match of the Day .

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I don't know about the cobbles on Wincobank Hill but I do remember TV reception problems in the area when I worked as a TV repair man 1972 to 1974. Reception from Emley Moor and the Sheffield repeater was difficult due to the hills in the way between the transmitter and the houses. Many of the aerials were pointed at the gas holders at the bottom of Jenkin Road to receive a signal from Emley Moor that was bounced off the gas holders. The problem that arose was that when the gas holders got below a certain level the signal was lost!

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Does anyone have a photograph of the TV transmitter van ?  I remember having a walk up there in the early 80's and coming over the brow to find this amazing piece of technology. 

 

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On ‎31‎/‎10‎/‎2016 at 10:56, duckweed said:
Someone told me that the line of double cobbles had been laid for the BBC Outside Broadcast Van to enable it to pick up the signal from the Snooker at the Crucible.  Is there any truth in this story do you know? There was a gun emplacement there but many people think the cobbles wouldn't be the material they used.  

Highly unlikely since stone doesn't pick up signals. The BBC van however would have used a satellite dish simply pointing up into the sky. The signals from the show were transmitted up to a satellite and then it would be picked up from the same satellite in the BBC studios in London. It was a live feed, which the BBC could edit or broadcast as they liked. If you had one of those dishes that moves, you could even pick up the same feed yourself and watch it even when the BBC were not broadcasting it. I don't know if you can still do that. A friend of mine used to do it. Incidentally it's how most live broadcasts are still done I think. Sending live pictures up from the camera to a satellite.     

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The first BBC TV Outside Broadcast was made as early as 1937. The first commercial communication satellite was placed in orbit in 1963.

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On ‎14‎/‎11‎/‎2016 at 07:57, lysander said:

The first BBC TV Outside Broadcast was made as early as 1937. The first commercial communication satellite was placed in orbit in 1963.

By the time the BBC were broadcasting snooker from the crucible there were 100's of satellites in the sky.

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When I lived in the St. Anthony's district of Crookes it was a regular thing to see a BBC repeater installation trailer parked on the end of Longfield Road, overlooking the Bole Hills Park.

On it's roof would be two steerable microwave dishes. One would be pointed at a dish mounted on the roof of the cantilever stand at the Wednesday ground, the other was pointed in the general direction of Leeds. It may have well been aligned on a BT microwave tower somewhere to the north. When it was in use there didn't seem to be anybody about, unless they were hiding in the trailer. A small generator provided power.This would be sometime between about the mid nineteen eighties up to the early nineties.

I suppose it would be eventually replaced by a high capacity co-ax / fibre link.

 

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I have found since that Yorkshire TV did use that site on Wincobank Hill and then BBC took over.  The information is on a BBC site  so no reason to believe they have got it wrong. A Friend of Wincobank told me they brought up a vehicle hence why they believed that was reason for 2 lines of cobbles. However I think the two lines of cobbles were laid in WW1 so they could bring up the big gun. 

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The "big gun" was a piece of anti-aircraft artillery...and on the night of the Zeppelin raid it fired not a single shot! ( rumoured because all those troops who should have manned the gun were having a nice drink in the Sheffield Arms...but the official version was so as not to help the Zeppelin's navigation)

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I passed Castle Green yesterday and some utility company has dug a trench down the green, they've removed the large stone cobbles first, I'm just waiting to see if they get replaced or will they do what these companies usually do, patch up with Asphalt.

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