Goonhilly Giants

Soldato
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Last week I had the pleasure of visiting the Goonhilly satellite station in Cornwall. For those of you that don't know much about it then here is a bit of info from wiki:

Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station is a large telecommunications site located on Goonhilly Downs near Helston on the Lizard peninsula of the English county of Cornwall.

Currently owned by BT Group plc, it is the largest satellite earth station in the world with over 25 communications dishes in use (and over 60 dishes in total) – they provide a significant proportion of Great Britain's satellite connectivity and the site also links into undersea cable lines. The first dish, Antenna One (dubbed "Arthur"), was built on the site in 1962 to link with Telstar and received the first live transatlantic television broadcasts from the United States. It was the first open parabolic design and is 29.5 metres in diameter and weighs 1,100 tonnes. The largest dish is the 32 metre diameter "Merlin" (other dishes include Guinevere, Tristan and Isolde after characters in Arthurian legend).

The earth station is powered from the national grid but the site is equipped with five large diesel generators which can provide indefinite backup power in the event of a national grid power failure.

A wind generator farm near by is believed by many to be part of the complex, but it is in fact completely unconnected to BT and is linked to the national grid.

A visitor centre at the site attracts technically-minded tourists. Inside are many interactive exhibits, a cafe, shop and one of Britain's fastest cyber cafes (a one gigabit pipe and a theoretical maximum speed per iMac of 100Mbit). There are also tours around the main BT site and into the heart of the oldest dish Arthur."

Here are a few of my pics:
"Arthur"
goonhilly5.jpg


goonhilly1.jpg


goonhilly3.jpg


goonhilly2.jpg
 

Tru

Tru

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I first found out about that place when I was snooping around BT's intranet. There's a whole clan of geeks that worship that place. I had no idea it was the biggest of it's kind.
fatmas said:
Interesting :)
*reads up*
I never knew as much detail about the site as that.

This is what GD should be about.

You seem to speak with a lot of authority on what GD should and shouldn't be. I'm not having a go but you're barely in the door and can't have much experience of what GD was about.
 
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Tru said:
You seem to speak with a lot of authority on what GD should and shouldn't be. I'm not having a go but you're barely in the door and can't have much experience of what GD was about.


I'm just voicing my opinion on what I think GD should be.
Now before this thread goes completely off topic...
100Mbit connection :D Yes please
 
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nelsby said:
Interesting....I was surprised it's owned by BT. With hindsight I suppose I shouldn't be but I was. Was the general tour etc good?
Yeah the tour wasn't bad, we were shown around the old control centre and the tour guide was very informative. With it being quite a secure place we went around the various satellites in a bus....

goonhilly4.jpg
 
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Werewolf said:
They probably upload the signal for Sky (who I beleive don't actually own the equipment they use;))

Sky doesn't own the equipment it broadcasts on? Theresan intresting thought.

I think I might have to read up on just how much it costs to broadcast using a sattellite. This thread has made me a bit curious to find out more. :)
 
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