Wrexham-Rhos Relay

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The Wrexham-Rhos transmitter is an analogue television relay of the Moel-y-Parc TV Mast. Despite its name, the mast it actually situated in Moss Village, and serves Wrexham and its surrounding villages. However, the area is predominately served by English transmitters Winter Hill and The Wrekin, simply because they offer both the English Channel 4 (while Wrexham-Rhos gives Welsh variant, S4C), and five, although being in the incorrect television region. Another factor is that both Granada Television and ATV, (received from Winter Hill and The Wrekin respectively) were on air much earlier than Welsh ITV contractor, WWN. Since then, WWN has been replaced by TWW and later HTV Wales, while ATV has been replaced by Central. The mast was constructed to offer Welsh television channels to the area, initally just S4C and BBC One Wales.[1]. Since then however, both HTV Wales and BBC Two Wales have been broadcasting from the mast, most recently being HTV in 1997 [2]. The relay is maintained by transmission company, Arqiva, and is a free-standing lattice structure. Despite the poor reception, Moel-y-Parc is the nearest main transmitter to the Wrexham area, but its line of sight is disrupted by local terrain.

1 Television
2 Radio
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] Television

At present, the mast broadcasts four of the five national terrestrial television channels. The mast's region is Wales, therefore it includes Channel 4 variant, S4C~. Channels 1 to 3 are broadcast at 200W ERP, while S4C~ broadcasts at 400W. Prior to 1998, S4C was carried on UHF 27. However, due to the upcoming launch of ONdigital, it was moved to UHF 25 as neighbouring English transmitter, The Wrekin, was to begin broadcasting multiplex B on that frequency, which could cause interference. A message was displayed telling viewers to re-tune their televisions (which was convenient as Moel-y-Parc also had to move S4C's frequency from UHF 67, so the same message was relayed), and the two versions (on both old and new frequencies) of the channel were carried for a couple of months. When the original at UHF 27 was switched off, the power on the newer version was increased.

UHF 39: BBC One Wales
UHF 28: BBC Two Wales
UHF 32: ITV1 Wales
UHF 25: S4C~

After digital switchover, the mast will broadcast three of the six digital multiplexes, giving half of all Freeview channels.[3]. The shutdown date for the Wrexham-Rhos relay is 2 March 2010 [4].