Madley Communications Centre is

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

's earth

satellite A satellite or an artificial satellite is an object, typically a spacecraft, placed into orbit around a celestial body. They have a variety of uses, including communication relay, weather forecasting, navigation ( GPS), broadcasting, scient ...

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 ham ...

and Kingstone,

Herefordshire Herefordshire ( ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the West Midlands (region), West Midlands of England, bordered by Shropshire to the north, Worcestershire to the east, Gloucestershire to the south-east, and the Welsh ...

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

Earth position

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

telephone A telephone, colloquially referred to as a phone, is a telecommunications device that enables 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 ...

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

and

television Television (TV) is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. Additionally, the term can refer to a physical television set rather than the medium of transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, ...

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 ( ; singular: ; meaning "Roman way") were physical infrastructure vital to the maintenance and development of the Roman state, built from about 300 BC through the expansion and consolidation of the Roman Republic and the Roman Em ...

running south from Kenchester 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 af ...

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 thermod ...

. What nearby electronic noise there was is said to compare to the strength of heat felt on the

Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It Orbit of the Moon, orbits around Earth at Lunar distance, an average distance of (; about 30 times Earth diameter, Earth's diameter). The Moon rotation, rotates, with a rotation period (lunar ...

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 (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

airfield An aerodrome, airfield, or airstrip 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 public or private use. Aerodromes in ...

RAF Madley Royal Air Force Madley or more simply RAF Madley is a former 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 v ...

, built in 1940.

Structures

There are over 65 dishes, the smallest being with the three main dishes each having a diameter of 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 orbit, circular geosynchronous or ...

. 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 ...

(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 plc ...

Cornwall Cornwall (; or ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is also one of the Celtic nations and the homeland of the Cornish people. The county is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, ...

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 BT Group 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