Alltwen television relay station
Television relay station in Swansea Valley, Wales / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Alltwen television relay station is sited on a hill to the southwest of Pontardawe in the Swansea Valley, at least a kilometre away from the village of Alltwen from which it takes its name. It was originally built in the late 1980s[1] as a fill-in relay for UHF analogue colour television. It consists of a 17 m self-supporting lattice mast standing on Craig Glyn Meirch, a hillside which is itself about 140 m above sea level (about 90 m above the valley floor). The transmitters are beamed northwards and eastwards to cater for those digital terrestrial TV subscribers in the towns of Pontardawe and Alltwen who for reasons of geography can't get a signal from the much bigger and more powerful Pontardawe transmitter. The Alltwen transmission station is owned and operated by Arqiva.
Mast height | 17 metres (56 ft) |
---|---|
Coordinates | 51°43′10″N 3°51′34″W |
Grid reference | SN716039 |
Built | 1980s |
Relay of | Kilvey Hill |
BBC region | BBC Wales |
ITV region | ITV Cymru Wales |
Alltwen transmitter re-radiates the signal received off-air from Kilvey Hill about 12 km to the southwest. When it came, the digital switchover process for Alltwen duplicated the timing at the parent station, with the first stage taking place on Wednesday 12 August 2009 and the second stage was completed on Wednesday 9 September 2009, with the Kilvey Hill transmitter-group becoming the first in Wales to complete digital switchover. After the switchover process, analogue channels had ceased broadcasting permanently and the Freeview digital TV services were radiated at an ERP of 2 W each.[2]