Dave Mundy
Who’d be a rigger?
1500′ TV Tower:
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Mike Giles, Peter Fox, Nick Ware
Awkward location for a wee! But who would know? Just another April shower. Certainly you’d win the “who can pee the furthest” challenge! But we always had to defy gravity!
Mike Jordan
Not wanting to lower the tone, but we had a similar situation with “schoolboy pointing” which resulted in severe corrosion to the copper flush water feed pipes across the trough (no individual containers in those days). A punishment (rear target to be supplied) was on its way to those who actually admitted to this severe crime when it was agreed that a supply of cleaning materials and a future behavioural change was acceptable punishment!
Pat Heigham
Hell of a base for a bungee jump!
Maybe the land divers of Pentecost Island (New Hebrides) could improve their skills! (The chaps who tie vines to their legs and leap off a high tower head first)
Glad to see that the climber fastens his second safety line before unclipping the first!
Tony Crake
And here was I way back in 1963 climbing up the first ten feet or so to get this pic at Skelton of a 325 foot tower… immaterial, really though, if you fell from that … or 1500feet !
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Dave Mundy
At our age you can have a nasty fall from a few inches!
Nick Ware
Reminds me of the story about a guy who threw himself off the top of the Empire State Building in a suicide attempt. No sooner airborne than he changed his mind, thinking maybe life wasn’t so bad after all. As he passed a first floor window, he was heard to say: “Well I’m doing alright so far!”
Doug Puddifoot
The version I heard was that the last guy left alive in the entire world was so lonely that he decided end it all by jumping from the top of the Empire State Building. As he passed the thirtieth floor on the way down, he heard a phone ringing.
Chris Woolf
Yes – but it was just an automatic dialler caller trying to sell a phoney government deal on boilers …
Geoff Fletcher
Another aerial shot – this one from 1964 when I was on TO19. The powers that were laid on a coach trip to Sutton Coldfield for those who were interested.
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Nebo Transmitter Mast, Gwynedd, Wales, as seen from Cherokee G AVWA on a tour of North Wales:
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Tony Grant
Yes, I am familiar with this one! It’s our local source of moving material and it only has what’s termed ‘Freeview Light’, so we don’t get the full range of garbage. At least we DO get CBeebies, which occasionally keeps our granddaughter amused. That said, she’s far more interested in snooker. Points to screen and says ‘Balls’. Sums it up for me!
Pat Heigham
Do you remember on Induction being given a tour of the Crystal Palace transmitter, and (tongue in cheek) were told that we were not expected to climb up the mast! Probably because of RF radiation burns, I think.
OK – name dropping here…. on the bridge of “Britannia” (The former Royal Yacht), I noticed signs warning not to approach too closely to the antennae positioned on the bridge wings. (By the way, it was a courtesy invite from a Naval friend who was serving on board. Two things stick in my mind after the conducted tour:
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In the spotless kitchen were two cupboards, one labelled ‘ship’s vegetable store’ the other ‘royal vegetable store’. Dunno which one had the asparagus!
- Between the kitchen and the dining room was a servery, which apart from the massive Hostess warm cabinets had a pair of GB Kaylee 35mm projectors firing into the dining room. Now THAT’S a Home Cinema
Geoff Fletcher
I remember that from my Induction Course in October 1963. Our visit was unusually interesting:-
Thursday 24th October 1963
Visited Crystal Palace Transmitter in morning. Very interesting. There was a breakdown while we were there and all hell let loose. Went flat hunting again at night. Hampstead this time, with Ade and Dave. Tea at BBC again.
John Cox
Being on Radio Links in the middle nineteen-fifties was a very dangerous occupation. I had narrow escapes at Gibbet Hill Hindhead with George Jakins, with Ken Mossman at Ditchling Beacon, at Dover and at Barkway RAF Station near Royston.
At Dover, Ron Latham, Clive Potter and myself had just crossed this field after returning from lunch in a terrific gale. We went to our respective cabins and I was studying an oscilloscope when I saw something flash by the window, it was this twelve foot dish which was used to pick up the signal from France. It had only been bolted to the wooden planking on the second platform on one of the C H (Chain Home) masts.
The most dangerous rig was at R A F Barkway near Royston in 1955. Ken Mossman, John Pilblad, Colin Bottomley (Rigger Driver) and myself were detailed to test a midway link between Newmarket and Swains Lane. Three of us travelled there on Ken Mossman’s pillioned motorbike. The rig was on the top of an old wooden mast, the highest section had been knocked off by an aeroplane during the war. On the first day we realized the rope that is used to pull the equipment to the top was not long enough so back to Wembley Base we went, the next day we travelled back to Barkway with John Pilblad sitting in the sidecar holding four hundred feet of rope while I sat behind Ken Mossman on his motorbike. When we arrived at Barkway Colin and myself climbed the mast taking one end of the rope with us. At the top we hauled up scaffolding to make a triangular hoist but for extra strength we clamped two fourteen foot lengths together side by side. with a pulley at the end. At the bottom Ken tied the legs and debree (panning head) on to the rope and, out of the kindness of his heart, a flask of tea. He wound the other end of the rope around the motorised winch on the Land Rover with John Pilblad standing outside on the passenger side. Ken started up the motor to the winch and the lift began, at the top we noticed that the fourteen foot poles were bending. We shouted down for Ken to stop but he couldn’t hear us above the noise of the motor, suddenly it stopped. John could see what was happening and ran hell for leather across the field, the two poles had snapped in half and were falling down to land a yard or two from the Land Rover. When he got over the shock Ken walked over to the heap on the ground and picked up the flask and shook all it’s contents out! Colin refused to climb the mast again so Ken was forced to climb with me and rig the link. The two halves of the scaffold poles adorned the corner of Alan Robert’s office for about a year.
Some time later I transferred to a scanner.
