| Madley Communications Centre | |
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| MadleySateliteEarthStation(PhilipHalling)Apr2006.jpg Earth receiving dishes |
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Location within United Kingdom Herefordshire
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| General information | |
| Type | Earth station |
| Location | Kingstone, Herefordshire |
| Coordinates | |
| Construction started | 1975 |
| Inaugurated | September 1978 |
| Height | 32m |
| Technical details | |
| Floor area | 218 acres (0.88 km2) |
| Design and construction | |
| Owner | BT Group |
| Landlord | Nick Wood (manager) |
Madley Communications Centre is British Telecom's earth satellite tracking station, between Madley and Kingstone, Herefordshire, England. It claims to be the largest earth station in the world.
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It lies on Colstone Common at grid reference SO420360.[1] The site dates from 1975 and is in active use for international telephone, fax and television 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. A Roman road passes close to the north of the site.
The site is in a sheltered rock bowl between the Malvern Hills 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. What nearby electronic noise there was compared to the strength of heat felt on the Moon from an electric fireplace on Earth.
The site first went into service in September 1978[2] on the site of the disused World War II airfield RAF Madley,[3] built in 1940.
There are sixty five dishes, with three main dishes having a diameter of 32 metres and weighs 290 tonnes. Madley 1, the first of the dishes, tracks a satellite about 25,000 miles (40,000 km) away, positioned over the Equator in geostationary orbit.
Madley was the first UK satellite site to transmit a fully digital transmission via a system called TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access).
Until its closure in 2008, Goonhilly in Cornwall provided a similar role.
The grounds are leased as an educational nature reserve, Madley Environmental Study Centre.