Madley Communications Centre is

BT Group BT Group plc (trading as BT and formerly British Telecom) is a British multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered in London, England. It has operations in around 180 countries and is the largest provider of fixed-line, broa ...

's earth

satellite A satellite or artificial satellite is an object intentionally placed into orbit in outer space. Except for passive satellites, most satellites have an electricity generation system for equipment on board, such as solar panels or radioisotope ...

tracking station, between

Madley Madley is a village and civil parish in the English county of Herefordshire. It is located six miles west of the city of Hereford. The population of the civil parish at the 2011 census was 1,200. Other settlements The parish includes the hamle ...

and Kingstone,

Herefordshire Herefordshire () is a county in the West Midlands of England, governed by Herefordshire Council. It is bordered by Shropshire to the north, Worcestershire to the east, Gloucestershire to the south-east, and the Welsh counties of Monmouthshire ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

Earth position

It lies on Coldstone Common at . The site dates from 1975 and is in active use for international

telephone A telephone is a telecommunications device that permits two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be easily heard directly. A telephone converts sound, typically and most efficiently the human voice, into e ...

fax Fax (short for facsimile), sometimes called telecopying or telefax (the latter short for telefacsimile), is the telephonic transmission of scanned printed material (both text and images), normally to a telephone number connected to a printer o ...

and

television Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertisin ...

transmission and reception. The station is in the civil parish of Kingstone, although most of the former airfield is in Madley, to the west of the site. The

Roman road Roman roads ( la, viae Romanae ; singular: ; meaning "Roman way") were physical infrastructure vital to the maintenance and development of the Roman state, and were built from about 300 BC through the expansion and consolidation of the Roman Re ...

running south from

Kenchester Kenchester is a parish in Herefordshire, England. It is about west-northwest of Hereford. History Kenchester is near the Romano-British town of Magnis. It was once part of the Angles' Magonsæte kingdom. Landmarks The Church of St Michael i ...

passes close to the north of the site.

Geology of the area

The site is in a sheltered rock bowl between the

Malvern Hills The Malvern Hills are in the English counties of Worcestershire, Herefordshire and a small area of northern Gloucestershire, dominating the surrounding countryside and the towns and villages of the district of Malvern. The highest summit affo ...

and the Black Mountains. This allowed the ground to take the weight of the large receiving dishes, but the most important fact was the lack of background

electronic noise In electronics, noise is an unwanted disturbance in an electrical signal. Noise generated by electronic devices varies greatly as it is produced by several different effects. In particular, noise is inherent in physics, and central to the ...

. What nearby electronic noise there was compared to the strength of heat felt on the

Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width of ...

from an

electric fireplace An electric fireplace is an electric heater that mimics a fireplace burning coal, wood, or natural gas. Electric fireplaces are often placed in conventional fireplaces, which can then no longer be used for conventional fires. They plug into the w ...

on Earth.

History

The site first went into service in September 1978BBC news report of anniversary celebrations, 25 September 2008 on the site of the disused

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

airfield An aerodrome (Commonwealth English) or airdrome (American English) is a location from which aircraft flight operations take place, regardless of whether they involve air cargo, passengers, or neither, and regardless of whether it is for publ ...

RAF Madley Royal Air Force Madley, or more simply RAF Madley, was a Royal Air Force station situated south west of Hereford in Herefordshire, England. The station was in use during the Second World War as a training base and was located between the village ...

, built in 1940.

Structures

There are over 65 dishes, the smallest being 90 cm (3') with the three main dishes each having a diameter of 32 metres (105') and weighing 290 tonnes. ''Madley 1'', the first of the dishes, tracks a satellite about away, positioned over the Equator in

geostationary orbit A geostationary orbit, also referred to as a geosynchronous equatorial orbit''Geostationary orbit'' and ''Geosynchronous (equatorial) orbit'' are used somewhat interchangeably in sources. (GEO), is a circular geosynchronous orbit in altitud ...

. The site covers a range from 66 degrees east to 314 degrees east, covering two thirds of the planet.

Transmissions

Madley was the first UK satellite site to transmit a fully digital transmission via

time division multiple access Time-division multiple access (TDMA) is a channel access method for shared-medium networks. It allows several users to share the same frequency channel by dividing the signal into different time slots. The users transmit in rapid succession, o ...

(TDMA). Until its closure in 2008,

Goonhilly Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station is a large radiocommunication site located on Goonhilly Downs near Helston on the The Lizard, Lizard peninsula in Cornwall, England. Owned by Goonhilly Earth Station Ltd under a 999-year lease from BT Group pl ...

Cornwall Cornwall (; kw, Kernow ) is a historic county and ceremonial county in South West England. It is recognised as one of the Celtic nations, and is the homeland of the Cornish people. Cornwall is bordered to the north and west by the Atlantic ...

provided a similar role.

Other use of grounds

The grounds are leased as an educational nature reserve, Madley Environmental Study Centre.

References

External links

BT VSAT Services

Madley Environmental Study Centre

''Calling Hereford'' Radio 4 September 2009

30th anniversary

Photo of station

Photo of site
{{BT Group British Telecom buildings and structures Buildings and structures in Herefordshire Earth stations in England Buildings and structures completed in 1978 Science and technology in Herefordshire Transatlantic telecommunications 1978 establishments in England