The equivalent in the US was the ATT Longlines microwave network; built for a cold war sage network and also serving normal customers. The microwave tower's buildings on the ground are faraday cages to reduce EMP further. It works very effectively! Fiber optics eventually replaced microwave for EMP resistant long distance communications.

I found an interesting although unproven link that I think was missing from backbone. A cable was installed from North Wales to Lytham with the local BT exchange in North Wales having two rather large (20 feet across) microwave dishes installed mid eighties. If you think about it Birmingham and Manchester almost certainly would be taken out in the initial blasts from Russian atomic bombs. So a backup route would be needed to keep the system connected to Scotland or even the VLF stations to allow them to operate.

Peter Laurie's book "Beneath The City Streets" has a good investigation of Backbone and the tower network.

WW2, nuclear war and communications really get my juices flowing. The preparations made and "what-ifs" are intriguing!

Comrade Wingray, Some interesting facts I can add to this excellent video. That top secret concrete tower at Heaton Park was originally a cooling tower for a small power station. You can see the old power station buildings at the bottom. They sold it to BT and they turned it in to a radio comms tower. The Windy Hill, Saddleworth, tower at 04:15 was a spare electricity pylon that belonged to EDF energy. They sold it to Granada television for TV transmissions. It was quite a job lifting it up with a crane and moving it. The public telephone at 05:25 is still a very common sight in Manchester. It's how most Mancs communicate when outside and they need to call back home to say what time they'll be back for tea. At 06.09. It's a community centre for under privileged Mancs.

So much information gathered and expressed with a due of enthusiasm which is entirely entertaining! Thank you

It’s amazing to me the shots a drone can get. So clear and so close. I realise I’m late to the party but this video really highlighted it for me. Keep it up 👍

The top section you refered to was a crane. However, I don't remember them being used that much when installing new aerials. The one at Charwelton was hit by a low flying Tornado jet, which caused a bit of damage to the crane and an aerial. Bits of the plane wing tip were recoved very quickly.

Great video Lewis. Lots of research gone in to making it

Brilliant footage. I grew up near Heaton Park. Now moved near Manchester Airport and was always interested in the stuff that's on that BT tower and grounds that seem abandoned

Great vid thanks for making and posting 👍

This is so interesting, in the northern suburbs of Leeds they have one so cool.

Those were quite the towers. Glad they still have a purpose. Great video! Thanks! 👍👍👍👊😎

Another excellent video Lewis. I grew up near to the Stokenchurch mast and always admired its takeoff (now visible to all driving the M40 or watching the Vicar of Dibly.

Hi Lewis, great and interesting video,many thanks.

Another great video,👍 thanks.

Just stumbled across your channel, this is a great video, back bone was actually larger and included steel home office towers as well and an underground cable. But great content. 👍👍👍

Great video! Really good research. I’m pretty certain there was a transmitter built on winter hill, that was to be used for backbone, or its predecessor? It was part of a fallback network of some type. From memory it’s a standard transmitter, nothing fancy. If I can find the source of where I read this I’ll let you know!

There was a tall lattice tower at Cheadle next to the Alex hospital which I think was associated with a nuclear bunker. The tower was pretty much halfway between Croker Hill and Heaton Park, so with the curvature of the earth the line of sight microwave beams would not have been too high there, so Cheadle could participate in the chain using a relatively short mast. In similar vein, there was a tower inside the nuclear facility on the Wirral that could eavesdrop on telephone conversations to and from Northern Ireland, which at the time would have been of great interest to UK security. I think it's a pity the towers have lost their distinctive microwave horns. Sutton Common in particular looks quite naked now, though I appreciate they were probably in need of maintenance and maintaining a redundant bit of kit isn't a priority! I thought the function of the Backbone had been taken over by fibre optic links? I wouldn't have thought Satellite links would have the required speed and bandwidth.

Greetings from Denmark, love your videos. Thank you...

Amazing. Thanks

As expected..... Excellent m8 👏👍

Brilliant video

Hi Lewis, many thanks, very professional presentation. From Nr Chester.

Thanks Lewis

Intersecting. I was visiting rapid city South Dakota in 2018. I noticed a similar tower in the city center. It should be noted that ellsworth airforce base is near by and it is a SAC bomber base with B1b lancers as well as support (or was) for minuteman 3 sites. It makes sense to me now why it was a concrete structure.

Thanks for the vid, I have been fascinated by these towers since a kid and still am lol 🙂 I live close to the charwelton tower, nice to see it with the horns, something very creepy but purposeful about it.

Interesting as always. I didn’t notice the top section had been removed. We’ll be passing later today so I’ll have a look.

Very good and interesting. Thank you... J

There's another concrete BT tower in Purdown, Bristol that must also be a part of the system, though not this core section you mentioned?

Another good video Lewis ive been to Stokenchurch and Charwelton towers and actually when i was up in my tower block i could see Charwelton Tower in the distance 30 miles away. Marc in Bletchley G6XEG

One of the stations I work for that I think is on its 75th anniversary now has a cold war bunker in it that at one time housed an emergency studio, transmitter and was fed by a hardened generator shack elsewhere in the building that has redundant grid feeds. Even had a little pipe going outside that was for sticking a radiation probe out of to see what the levels were like. I do know it was near impossible to run new cable in it because you have to hammer through about 3ft of cement and rebar. I don't know if any extra hardening was done to the AM tower but it's still standing and in use. The FM station in the building is still the primary for the emergency alert system taking advantage of the redundant everything including redundant offsite generator backed up transmitter locations. I have not seen any similar hardened towers here in the US give or take some of the Bell Longlines. There is a bell archives youtube channel that is fascinating and covers them quite well.

Ya know where to find me!, when the stuff hits the fan 😮

I really like a tower. They look stunning

Tring actually got built at Stokenchurch instead. Its right before the Canyon on the M40.

I would love to see you do a video on Autovon.

Discovered the channel recently and I've been working backward through your videos. Good stuff! 3:09 No offence, but I swear UK place names always sound like they were procedurally generated.

Sutton's land was purchased 63, tower completed 66. Would love to know date foundations put in and building commenced.

I went to the pye green tower yesterday. Looks like nobody has been there in years but it’s operating

I live near to the Pye Green one in the West Midlands which was part of Backbone. I can see it from our roof on a clear day. Its original purpose is still quite a sobering thought!

Question Lewis...when you use the drone at similar locations to this video are u ever approached and asked what your up to? Great video though matey keep up the good work 👍👍

Hi, do you know anything about the one in Tring, Hertfordshire. i live in Tring and know nothing about this. it certainly isn't here now.

Any idea where the tower is or was in Lockerbie? I know the area well but don’t recall a mast or tower or this sort.

Living very close to the Stokenchurch one. I would love to visit the inside one day.

In the US we had Long Lines It was sad that Long Lines was made redundant. It's that redundancy that makes the system strong. From all the outages that have been happening over the years. I think we need it as a backup. I still question the breakup of ATT. Especially sense it was a utility serving the public interest. Now all the independent companies that make up the system. In order to be competitive and profitable. Sacrifices must be made. We see those Sacrifices in service and reliability issues. I can't imagine how bad it would be in a major disaster.

Realistically, how were these supposed to be serviceable after a nuclear attack? Even if the tower survives, it seems like a nearby, let alone direct, atomic explosion would wreck the antennas and electronic equipment. Seems like they would be obvious targets as well. Or was this just early enough in the cold war that precision attacks weren't really considered?

id be suprised if the towers electronics (mainly the exposed dishes and other equipment) would survive the massive EMP blast released by a nuclear strike

There's a similar tower in Bristol on the way out to the M4/M5?

Yep. That's why the London Post office tower was build like it is.

my former employer did some fire protection systems on these facilities. the cable runs had problems as they filled up with fog on cold days resulting in many false alarms.

Check out those old cassegrain horn antennas, don't see them these days.

I used to be part of the team that maintained the back up generators at a few of these sites

Would it work after an emp attack

Fantastic video. Can I ask what drone you are using? Thanks!

Very interesting I can see the Pye green tower from my house! It’s a 5 minute drive

What about Purdown in Bristol

When I built my first Hydrogen bomb in the garden shed, the first thing that the neighbours complained about was the noise, then the loss of electricity, phone lines, satellite dish and how even the battery powered kitchen clock all stopped working when it went off. Fortunately, I know enough about thermonuclear weapons to explain about the electromagnetic pulse that occurs when these things go off. I must know something that GCHQ don't know about, as all their computers will stop working too, making these communication towers utterly useless.

Whenever I see a nuclear-hardened structure like that surrounded by ordinary buildings or bucolic scenery it always creeps me out a little, knowing what that structure is supposed to withstand and that nothing else in the vicinity is protected in the event it is ever put to the test.

What are the antennas at 3:17 and 3:31?

I have seen a tower like this in the vicinity of one of the major German Airbases. Wonder if the systems were separate or connected.

Amazing towers must have cost a pretty penny! Depending upon satellites is a bad idea.

Hardly top secret now then are they! :D

nice

You missed the Police wireless station link?

Hah when I was a kid I used play commandos in the woods by pye green

I live in Birmingham and it's been quite sad to see the antenna galleries of the city's BT Tower go from being rammed to pretty much desolate.

🔦Not a secret anymore isn't it👈😇👌

Superb video as usual and I just knew that someone would comment on how close you were getting to the towers and the links, the only danger of course was a fly away of your 250g drone, these microwave links are very robust, as you know many years ago I was running a permanent 7 mile link, these towers are from a bygone era and nearly all are very sparsely populated, sites charge the operators even if the antenna isn't being used so once they stop using it, it comes off the tower. If you want any footage of charwelton I can fire up my hot air balloon for you, cheers.

The "top part" was a 30 tonne crane. The platforms are called "Galleries"

Real life testing? Iskandar proof?

Has a harracane mess with it

I always wonder when you do these vids.....doesn't flying this close to powerful transmitters affect the drone and connection for controls...?

They’re not secret now! Which government did you say you work for??

They’re not really top secret mate👏😁

they WERE top secret ...

Anyone have a spare nuke? I want to test something. I don't need a big one.

Again another victim of fiber and progress. Each 36Mhz microwave channel of only 24 available channels could carry only about 40Mbps of information. There are now much faster microwave links but, they did not exist at that time and are effected by weather. The concrete towers made no difference but are much less prone to motion and nicer to look at if kept up.