The Penderyn television relay station is sited on high ground to the east of the village of Penderyn in the

Brecon Beacons The Brecon Beacons (; ) are a mountain range in Wales. The range includes South Wales's highest mountain, Pen y Fan (), its twin summit Corn Du (), and Craig Gwaun Taf (), which are the three highest peaks in the range. The Brecon Beacons ha ...

. It was originally built in 1984 as a fill-in relay for UHF analogue television covering the communities of Penderyn and

Hirwaun Hirwaun (, ; ) is a village and Community (Wales), community at the north end of the Cynon Valley in the County Borough of Rhondda Cynon Taf, South Wales. It is NW of the town of Aberdare, and comes under the Aberdare post town. At the United Ki ...

. It consists of a self-supporting lattice steel mast standing on a hillside which is itself about above sea level. The transmissions are beamed west and south to cover all these targets. The Penderyn transmission station is owned and operated by

Arqiva Arqiva () is a British telecommunications company which provides infrastructure, broadcast transmission and smart meter facilities in the United Kingdom. The company is headquartered at the former Independent Broadcasting Authority headquart ...

. Penderyn transmitter re-radiates the signal received off-air from Carmel about to the west. When it came, the

digital switchover Digital usually refers to something using discrete digits, often binary digits. Businesses *Digital bank, a form of financial institution *Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) or Digital, a computer company *Digital Research (DR or DRI), a software ...

process for Penderyn duplicated the timing at Carmel with the first stage taking place on 26 August 2009 and with the second stage being completed on 23 September 2009. After the switchover process, analogue channels had ceased broadcasting permanently and the Freeview digital TV services were radiated at an ERP of 2.6 W each.

Channels listed by frequency

Analogue television

Spring 1984 - 26 August 2009

Penderyn entered service in spring 1984, and (being in Wales) transmitted the

S4C S4C (, ''Sianel Pedwar Cymru'', meaning ''Channel Four Wales'') is a Welsh language free-to-air public broadcast television channel. Launched on 1 November 1982, it was the first television channel to be aimed specifically at a Welsh-speakin ...

variant of Channel 4.

Analogue and digital television

26 August 2009 - 23 September 2009

The UK's

commenced at Carmel (and therefore at Penderyn and all its other relays) on 26 August 2009. Analogue BBC Two Wales on channel 45 was first to close, and ITV Wales was moved from channel 49 to channel 45 for its last month of service. Channel 49 was replaced by the new digital BBC A mux which started up in 64-QAM and at full power (i.e. 2.6 W).

Digital television

23 September 2009 - present

The remaining analogue TV services were closed down and the digital multiplexes took over on the original analogue channels' frequencies.

References

External links

The Transmission Gallery: Penderyn
{{Television transmitters in the UK Transmitter sites in Wales Carmel UHF 625-line Transmitter Group