Visiting the Post Office Tower

[ppppenguin]

When I was a schoolboy my mother took me to visit the Post Office Tower. Probably in 1969. At the time it one of 2 high points in London that open to the public. The other was the Shell Centre, only abut 350 feet, as against the PO Tower's 600 or so. I've just found my copies of the booklets for both which has stirred fond memories. ISTR enjoying the Shell Centre more than the POT, even though it was much lower. Possibly becuase the viewing gallery was much more spacious.

You may remember that the POT viewing gallery was closed after an IRA bomb attempt. Don't know when the Shell Centre closed its doors to the public.

I've not been since.

Who else has memories of visiting the PO Tower and Shell Centre?

[Nick]

I visited the POT as a child too - even had a meal in the rotating restaurant - shut, I believe in 1980.

Remember noticing that you could just make out the floor rotating and that it seemed that it would have been easy to get your fingers trapped in the gap!

Not got any of the memorabilia any more...

Visited it again much later when I was an EE - worked for a while at BT Martlesham Heath when was a young engineer doing some microwavey stuff for a bit of the government - still have some of my early-issue toolkit from there (side cutters etc.).

[Refugee]

I am pretty sure that if you want a no expense spares dinner party they might well be prepared to run the rotating restaurant up again for the night.

[ppppenguin]

The IRA bomb was rather more than attempt. It actually exploded causing significant damage. It was nowhere near compromising the structural integrity which is more than you can say for the gas explosion at Ronan Point just a few years earlier.

Picture in this article:
http://home.bt.com/news/on-this-day/octo...4009269376

[Terry]

Never visited the POT but made several visits to the roof of the Stock Exchange (365 ft asl) - a number of them to put the UHF aerial back on course after a bout of gale force winds! When we were carrying out investigations into using Teletext on our cable TV network we found it to be particularly susceptible to even minor misalignment but it was easy to correct as both Croydon and Crystal Palace masts were clearly visible on the sky line - just aim for the taller one on the left!

I took my wife up there, just after we first met. The parapet was a bit on the high side and about two feet deep, so there was no chance of falling! The only way to look over the edge was to climb on the track that the window cleaners' crane used, stand on the outside rail and lean forwards onto the parapet. To prove she'd done it, she took a picture of a London Routemaster bus waiting at the Old Broad Street lights from directly overhead!

[ppppenguin]

When you're that close to the TX and with direct line of sight a slight misalignment hardly matters. You'd almost light a bulb on the end of the cable Though it might well matter to minmise multipath which would hurt Teletext. When I was at Imperial we had aerials about 200 feet up on the roof of the EE building. There was about a volt of Ch1 at the bottom of the downlead.

The other day I was checking TV reception at a ground floor flat near Clapham South station. Damp finger in aerial socket was enough to give both signal strength and quality well into the green on the freeview box display. I'm used to that at the Dulwich Museum but this isn't quite so close and it was ground floor with a big building across the road and in the way.

[Terry]

When you're that close to the TX and with direct line of sight a slight misalignment hardly matters. 

Depends  how much building work and other tall buildings there are around to affect reception ...!

We moved from the Stock Exchange Tower to a building just north of the City boundary. Broadgate and the Liverpool Station redevelopment were under way at the time and although signal level was high, the screen was filled with ghosting, with about 10 images of everything. Of course, everything changed any time a crane jib moved so we had to get our signal from Alexandra Palace - 67 watts ERP as against 1kW from Crystal palace with a CCI limited coverage of between 1 and 2 km of the transmitter! 

At that range, signal levels were low enough to provide slightly grainy pictures but the Teletext quality was perfect.

I remember having to help install a dual standard TV on the southern edge of Crystal Palace Park.

The existing set top aerial produced loads of signal on Bands I & III but we needed a small Yagi in the loft pointing at an angle upwards to get a decent UHF signal!

[Nick]

When I was at school in SE London, a couple of mates, a teacher and i had a guided tour of the transmitters in the bunker under crystal palace... scary/fascinating/dangerous place.

[ppppenguin]

I've been to the Crystal Palace transmitters several times but never knew about a bunker. All the trasmitters were in rooms above ground level as far as I can remember. This is true of both the analogue and digital eras since I've visited during both.

[Terry]

December 1963 when I visited so firmly in the analogue era!

Transmission hall, as Jeffrey says, at ground level. Very spacious with a polished tiled floor, double doors in the middle of the long sides with 19" cabinets either side of them - two sound transmitters on one wall and two vision transmitters on the other.

Could Nick have been confused by the layout of the entrance approach? From memory, because of the rising ground level, the entrance might have given the misleading impression of an underground bunker but if you'd been shown where the coax exited on its way up the mast, the daylight would have proved otherwise.

When we went there had been a large fall of snow and it was bitterly cold. so the last thing we wanted to do was to stand around admiring the surroundings!