Goonhilly Giants

[Luseac]

Only annoying thing was the tour guide kept saying "Righty'O" after each sentance.

I was having a tour at some farm place in cornwall, The 15 year old girl kept saying "Ok" and "Basically"

 

[Visage]

Sky doesn't own the equipment it broadcasts on? Theresan intresting thought.

I think I might have to read up on just how much it costs to broadcast using a sattellite. This thread has made me a bit curious to find out more.

A transponder on the Astra platform is of the order of 1 million USD per annum.

Digital compression will allow you to broadcsat approx 8 channels on this trasnponder, so you're talking 125,000 USD per channel.

 

[Alasdair]

I remember Goonhilly was featured in a British Telecom advert many years ago, where the theme of the advert was to "keep talking", the voiceover being done by Steven Hawking. One of those ads that you remember for years and you immediately associate with a brand.

 

[danza]

Bah, I went to Goonhilly when I were a mere sprite. n00bs.

I didn't appreciate it though, as I was a bit young and didn't have the attention span required for such a day out. I do remember the tour guide saying something about if the power went down and they needed to re-orientate a dish they could do it manually via a handwheel. 1,000 turns of said handwheel = 1 degree of rotation.

/arm drops off.

 

[GoldenGlory]

I did a week's work experience there a couple of years back.
Spent some some working with the engineers, the view from the top of an antenna is amazing.

I also went in the generator room, loudest thing i've ever heard in my life. Even with ear defenders you could still hear it very loudly.

Checked out the undersea cables, huge cables and to think they went all the way to america. I also saw a special TV relay for the Americans in Iraq, they had to alter the colours for them

 

[Zacko]

Went there about a year ago, was really interesting actually. Might have to go and steal there connection

Work experience sounds great there, would have loved to have done that.

 

[TheVoice]

Went there a long time ago when I was younger. Was pretty interesting; remember them having infrared security everywhere, because we were told to stay within certain areas (outside).

 

[Tractor Man]

I'm surprised some people don't know about the vast size of Goonhilly. You can see the dishes from miles away on a clear day.

I work for a company that does electrical testing at Goonhilly. We wanted to switch off a piece of equipment for testing, but were told that it would cost BT £4 million an hour in lost revenue. So we decided to leave that piece of equipment alone.