Despite being pulled really strongly to the various masts and transmitters that surround the high moorlands of the Pennines I’m still not entirely sure what I want to do with them. They tie into my ideas of history of networks and of the informational ether which blankets the landscape as well as just plain turning me on. I’ve found a bunch of seven of them which form a loose ring around the Marsden moor area - Vicar’s Lot, Cop Hill, Moorside Edge, Rock Stones (not sure if this is the correct name), Crow Knowl (ditto), Saddleworth and Holme Moss. Its a shame to have to leave out the incredible Emley Moor mast but its jusy too far away to be of any use - even though I just realised you can see it from many parts of Huddersfield.
The latest thing I’ve done is to add them all to my Google Earth map and join the dots to see where the straight lines between masts intersect the paths of walks I have done or plan to do. Aswell as remind me of my hippy days with an OS map and a ruler hunting ley lines its given me a series of crossing points which may serve as good locations to take earth samples to culture the microbes that they contain. Its a lot less arbitrary than just choosing a location because it looked nice or because it was time for a rest like I was before. Maybe I could even get the calcite producing bacteria to build models of the masts they are located near, or of the two they were between.
It would be a joy to transmit one of my encoded landscapes from one or more of the radio masts however briefly but I’m not entirely sure thats going to be possible…
The red diagonal line is the rough course of the Standedge tunnels.
I’ve also been finding out a little more about what the various masts actually do and how to tell thanks to the wonderful http://tx.mb21.co.uk
For example I now know that Moorside Edge is a MW radio transmitter and will have little or no trouble spotting others of its kind for the rest of my days. Here’s a few others to help others with their spotter’s badges.
