Lindholme Radio Tower

I lived in Watton back in the 60s, but can still remember this tower being in place until at least 1998 ?



This is from Google maps (2008, I think). it was just along the road from Eastern Radar, I know absolutely nothing about this subject, but can recall seeing "similar" masts around east anglia.

That picture from Watton looks very similar to a mast we had at Barkston which was for the BOXER system. As the mast at Lindholme was removed when the RAF finally withdrew, Im wondering that as the final RAF user was a signals unit if it may have been a standby to line reciever?

That is the structure, but minus the two microwave dishes and without the low band folded dipole at the top. We may be getting a bit closer to the answer!, but as I mentioned previously, it could just have been that the Police found a structure to hang their antennas on for a time and it was a coincidence that it was adjacent to Northern Radar and Lindholme.

Off topic but could the microwave dishes on the Watton mast be Bowman?

I have attached a snapshot of Elvington. I was told that they were Bowman, but hey... .. The mast at Elvington was complete with the dishes in 2006, long after the RAF withdrew, probably as a link to the UNITER at Rawcliffe Bridge.

Cheers,
Graham

Those dishes at Elvington MAY be part of the now decommissioned USAF DEB system.
I did have a jpeg map of the UK link sites somewhere which I will try to find to see if Elvington was one of them.

Thanks.
DEB map attached. It could have changed but USAF is reduced in size in the UK, rather than increased I would have thought. Not been by Elvington for a while. Shame if this mast and the elevated control tower has been taken down.
G

Your map is much clearer than the one I have/had and mine was also not in colour.
Garrowsby Hill is not far from Elvington and a look back in time on Google Earth show dishes on the mast at Garrowby Hill possibly pointing in the direction of Elvington so it may well be a different system.
The latest GE imagery seems to show the Garrowsby Hill mast devoid of those dishes.
There used to be a similar looking tower on Barkston Heath but I believe it has now gone too.

The Deb system has pretty much gone now as far as I am aware, I think that the only USAF microwave link now in the UK is between Mildenhall and Lakenheath everything else being Fibre Optic according the the internet.

Back to your map briefly and it shows the link from Martlesham to High Garret via, I assume Gt Bromley,
In later years Gt Bromley linked direct to Wethersfield, the masts still being in situ and High Garret was vacated, there is still a mast on the site but I believe it was added later.

Getting back to the original subject: the folded dipoles as already stated do look UHF PMR ish, either used phased as a colinear of for directivity and almost certainly not for ATC use.
I believe that in the days before Airwave, but I could be wrong, that UHF TX/TX were often located locally with the VHF providing county wide comms, often from remote sites, officers being able to repeat from their UHF handhelds via their car to the VHF channels when out of range of the UHF sites.

Also, does anyone know if Northern Radar would have had their TX/RX,s on the radar site or would they have had remote equipment co located with other ATC sites?
One presumes they used both VHF/UHF?

NR appeared to have (in the early days) two masts on site located just behind the ops building (attached)

ER would appear to have something similar. (2017). flic.kr/p/21TLCM9