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| Coil house tea time: A brew-up is in progress while fitting out the new coil house at the Butt of Lewis. The copper sheeting can clearly be seen. The large window at the end had a small hole for the coil output to the mast. Later, the open weave coils on their huge frame would be installed. These occupied most of the space in the house. The coils houses were heated to prevent condensation, and contained all the ancillary equipment for aerial feeder matching, sequence tuning and aerial current monitoring. (Photo courtesy Doug Sim) |
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| Ploughing In the Earth Mat – Butt Of Lewis: The Butt of Lewis was an existing North Scottish slave, so the green slave of the Hebridean chain was co-located here. The only available site was high on the “Machair” above the Atlantic shore. The radial earth-mat was laid using a Ransomes one-horse plough that had been adapted to carry a coil of wire, and looked as though it has laid innumerable earth mats in its time. The whole apparatus was manual, with no auto feed or tensioning, hence the ploughman’s assistants. The earth mats at the Barra and Kentra stations were insulated to prevent attack from the acidic soil. (Photo courtesy Doug Sim) |
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| View of mast bottom – Butt of Lewis: This scene shows the impressive Atlantic breakers as a backdrop to the base of the new mast at Butt of Lewis. This was a co-located station of the Hebridean/North Scottish chains. The triple insulators that support the mast can clearly be seen but the safety fence has not been erected. The mast had to be put in this impressive location to avoid the crofts that surrounded the station, and to stay clear of the existing T–array mast. Consequently, the cable runs from the transmitter building were some of the longest ever laid. (Photo courtesy Doug Sim) |
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| North Scottish slave – Peterhead: This shows the attractive Scottish vernacular architectural style used for the North Scottish chain - the Peterhead in Scotland. In the centre is the transmitter room and on either side are the family quarters of the resident engineers. The alarms from the transmitter building were switched through at night to whichever engineer was on watch. In the left foreground can be seen the newly installed APS (Anti-Precipitation Static) aerials. These replaced the wire aerials suspended from the telegraph poles, which have not yet been taken down. The APS aerials greatly reduced the chance of loss of lock due to static during heavy rainfall. It is believed that this dustbin antenna design was only deployed within the UK. Because of the local style of the buildings and the distance from the mast, new visitors would often go first to the base of the mast to find no one at home, then start knocking at doors along the road. (Photo courtesy Doug Sim) |
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| Lerwick station circa 2007 This was a Decca Navigator
station in the North Scotland chain, with family accommodation for two
resident engineers - one at each end of the building. The hall in
the middle was the transmitter room. Three radio masts still stand on top
of the hill . Two can still be seen behind the building here.
Out of the three masts, only one was needed for the Decca transmitter.
Having HF or VHF services on the other two masts would make sense
in order to communicate with the mainland.
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