Colin Pierpoint – Page 3 – What Was Pebble Mill?

Colin Pierpoint blog – Part 16 Comms on Location 2

CMCR9 photo by John Abbott, no reproduction without permission

CMCR9 photo from John Abbott, no reproduction without permission

(Here is the continuation of Colin Pierpoint’s blog about his BBC career).

I did 5 days in Wales for Songs of Praise to BBC Wales from St Asaph. Several days in Hastings for a cricket OB. (A great moment here. There was a delay in setting up the link signal which was received at Swains Lane in North London. The London Comms Engineer there said on the RT (Radio telephone) “I suppose we are waiting for Birmingham are we?” So Paul in the Birmingham links van replied “No, actually we are waiting for the London Links van to arrive”! I did a link at the Oval Cricket Ground for a test match, working late into the night sending VTR recorded on site to the Television Centre VT. And of course I did Edgbaston several times (My first ever radiolink which was a bit of a disaster! The Cricket Ground were having a management meeting when we arrived for the Vision Circuit Test and they had all parked where the links van should be. I sent requests to move their cars but they would not come out. Our van was one from Wales and all the mains sockets were different from ours!) I also did the radiolink for the opening of the National Exhibition Centre (NEC) by the Queen [see comment at the bottom of this post]. It was freezing cold with snow on the ground and I had to stand outside CMCR9 with a field telephone in my hand for ages, doing a lines test which had problems. It was at the NEC on a later OB that I was ordered off the site by the Shop Steward because I was not a member of the ABS (Association of Broadcasting Staff). I went to tell the Engineering Manager in the scanner (CMCR) first, who agreed that it was best if I leave, and then reported it to the CPE in Pebble Mill. In fact, all I had missed was the derig and making the tea for our rigger-driver! It was the Rigger-Driver Jim, who asked me to leave! He should have waited until I finished making his tea before he told me.

There was one cricket match Television OB while the BBC were having strike action. Sound was cut for some programmes but not all. The Engineering Manager came to my links van and said “What action have you taken to ensure that our sound is not cut?” So I said that on yesterday’s cricket match from somewhere else (not mine) the OB had rung the Television Centre and said can you guarantee that our sound will not be cut? So they cut it! I told the EM that because of this I was keeping my head down. He said “Good Idea” and our sound was not cut. (Although I was not in the union at that time, I did contribute to the strike fund. Later I also joined BECTU trade union at Wood Norton and did go on strike for one day in support of my colleagues). I also did a midpoint at Daventry Transmitter site; it was only a test in case of London flooding, but a chance to talk to my transmitter colleagues.

Sometimes we operated a repeater inside the telephone exchange. This is a box of BBC equipment used to correct the frequency response before it is passed on to the nearest BBC centre. (Later this was stopped when the Post Office union decided that their staff should do it). I did repeaters in Kettering, Coventry, Hanley and Shrewsbury. I did the repeater for the famous broadcast for the BBC anniversary at Sudley Castle. Very embarrassing!

You will remember that I preferred to take the Comms self-drive car for lines tests. My own Land Rover was getting rather elderly and unreliable at the time and if it brike down on official dury, it would have been my fault. So I thought that by using the Comms Department car there would be no problem if it stopped working. How wrong I was! At Burghley Park for the horse trials I took the self drive car which did break down! I was crossing the course near the finishing post when the engine stopped half way across the track; right where the horses would be finishing the event! An image entered my mind of people at Pebble Mill watching the trials on BBC2 as the horses went round an abandoned car at the finishing post, saying “Isn’t that the Comms Self drive car?” So I rang the transport office Neville Mowl and they called out the AA. It seems that I had flooded the carbuettor with an automatic choke (Ford Escourt). The AA man told me that I should have told him where I was and not where the car was, but I had to move about and get on with testing the cross course cables as there was less than an hour to transmission.

An interesting lines test was at Holme Pierrepont, the national watersport centre. The man on the gate let me in a few times, and then said “You have been through here too often today, I am not letting you in again”! So I showed him my BBC pass. When he saw the name Pierpoint, he thought there was a fiddle somewhere but couldn’t quite put his finger on it. Meanwhile, the Post Office Engineer, who I was working with, went in and out past me without being stopped once!

Colin Pierpoint

The following comment was left on the Pebble Mill Facebook page:

Malcolm Hickman: ‘Jim Lloyd and I were stood by the link on the roof of the NEC because it was a grade 1. It was hissing down, so we took shelter in a walkway that crossed the roof. There were 2 men stationed there who were in suits and they had shoulder holsters with guns. We could see a semicircle of people inside the building at the end of the walkway. We did look a bit scruffy in rigging jackets and duffle coat and as the queen got a bit closer, they told us to get out, so we never actually got to shake hands.’

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Colin Pierpoint blog – part 15, Comms on Location

Visiting Droitwich with Martin Watkins, who was later Quality Monitor. Copyright, Colin Pierpoint, no reproduction without permission.

Part of the comms work was out on the road. I did many Sound Lines Tests. These were on the day before a broadcast, which was usually live, but lines were also used for VTR (Videotape recording in London or other regions). From my diary, I tested lines in Birmingham Cathedral, Cheltenham Racecourse, Rugby, Wolverhampton Football Ground, Nottingham Forest Football Ground, Coventry, Ipswich {which at the time was of course in the Midland Region. (Only the BBC could do it this way)}, Hereford Cathedral, Hanley Queens theatre, Villa Park, Moseley Football Ground, Edgbaston Cricket Ground, and Birmingham City. Most of these I tested many times. I liked to take the “self drive car” then if it broke down it was not my fault. (see below!). At that time the lines were provided by the Post Office, later to separate as British Telecom. For a lines test the BBC engineer met a PO man usually with a cable coming down a telegraph pole, or from a hole in the ground. We did have some comms engineers who were not too good on the Comms switchboard (EMX); in one lines test I suddenly heard Stan Smith’s voice (the ACSE in the Comms Centre). He had been talking on the phone to someone else in Birmingham, so I said “Hello Stanley”. He asked Where are you? I said “Would you believe, standing in a flowerbed in Peterborough?”

As I mentioned above, we also did the radio links to get the television signals out from the OB to a BBC centre. Amongst others I did Coventry Locano, Derby FA cup, Dunstable mid-point (where you receive the signal and pass it on to the next radiolink site). Ipswich Town, Norwich City, Moseley Rugby Ground. The Comms Supervisor was often in the Sutton Coldfield OB room receiving signals from dishes on the top of the mast. There was a lovely catering woman there, who would ring me at Pebble Mill to take my order for the next day, and then bring my meal into the OB room on a tray!

When reporting on site at Sutton Coldfield, I often had a chat to the transmitter staff and got to know some of them quite well. They had a monitoring problem there because it was difficult to get a quiet signal with all the RF (Radio Frequencies) around at high level. At the time their Radio 3 transmitter drive occasionally made a low frequency rumbling noise, so we had an arrangement that it was all right for them to ring me at home to listen and check for them. My equipment was nothing special, but I did have a clean signal. They also encouraged me to ring their MIC (Monitoring Information Centre) whenever I heard the fault.

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Colin Pierpoint blog – part 14 Working at Pebble Mill, Comms

This is part 14 of Colin Pierpoint’s blog about his BBC career:

I transferred into Communications in Birmingham in 1971 after completing the Grade C Engineering Course, and a year’s attachment to the Engineering Training Department at Wood Norton. In 1975 I got another secondment as a Lecturer for a year, and then after returning to Comms, a vacancy arose in 1977 for Communications Supervisor and I applied and got it. This was the job I really wanted in Manchester. I also had my sights on ETD, but at the time they wanted memberhip of an Engineering Institution on applications for Lecturers. I had been studying for an Open University degree with this in mind, but the OU at that time did not give the required qualification of “CEng” (Chartered engineer) at the time.

So from 1977 until 1980 I continued working as Communications Supervisor in the Comms Centre at Pebble Mill. An exciting evening was when the “Song for Europe” programme was broadcast live, with voting around the British Isles to choose the entry for the Eurovision Song Contest. Vision circuits from Manchester, Glasgow and Norwich were passing through the Birmingham Comms Centre. There was tie for first place so the regions had to vote again at short notice. Just as this was announced , I saw the Norwich picture lose sync (start breaking up on the screen). I said to one of my staff, put an extra equaliser in the circuit, and just twiddle the knobs until the sync pulse look square. He did this quickly and seconds later they cut to Norwich for their vote.

It was nice to be trusted by TAR staff (Television Apparatus Room, who adjusted the camera channels for studios A, B and C). Comms were often the only engineers in Pebble Mill in the evening and David Stevens would sometimes ask me to clear a fault. Usually I could do a tweak of the camera control unit, which I always reported to TAR staff the next day. One fault I failed to rectify: there was shading across the Midland Symbol C (the rotating world). No matter what I adjusted; iris or target volts, I could not get the image over the whole field, [for the technical readers, the monocrome output went into an inlay switcher, and parts of the image would disappear as I adjusted]. So next day the TAR staff told me what the problem was. The bulb lighting the bottom of the symbol had blown! Too technical for me I am afraid.

Colin Pierpoint

TV Apparatus Room (TAR) ST B Line Up Desk with John Macavoy & Maurice Darkin. Photo by Ivor Williams, no reproduction without permission.

Colin Pierpoint blog, part 13 – Pebble Mill at One pilot

CMCR9, photo from John Abbott, no reproduction without permission

CMCR9 (on Gardeners’ World), photo from John Abbott, no reproduction without permission

[Here is the thirteenth part of Colin Pierpoint’s blog about his BBC career]

I think the Pebble Mill at One programme needs no explanation to our readers, but I was asked by the Deputy Manager Comms and Engineering Services, John Stark, to be the communications co-ordinator for the pilot programme, which was to try out the system. The mixing point or gallery was the Birmingham scanner CMCR6 or 9. This was parked in the garage area where there was a wallbox with tielines to the Communications Centre. I was rushing round from here to VT and Comms Centre trying to get circuits established. I don’t think everyone in Operations knew that I had actually been allocated to do this, perhaps I should have explained to those I came into contact with. The reason for using the scanner was that Studio A at Pebble Mill must have been in use. On other days the scanner was at Gosta Green to give colour facilities on a drive in basis. (Gosta Green studio was never converted to colour, and was eventually sold as a black and white studio).

Colin Pierpoint

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Pete Simpkin and Richard Jeffs remembering 1976

Photo from Andy Walters, no reproduction without permission.

BBC Radio Birmingham presenters Pete Simpkin and Richard Jeffs, with BBC WM presenter Danny Kelly, live from Sutton Park this morning [4th August 2016] with memories of the summer of 1976.

The following comment was left on the Pebble Mill Facebook page:

Colin Pierpoint: ‘I remember the hot summer of 1976, the Pebble Mill front lawn turned brown. The government appointed a minister for drought; the BBC followed him making live statements on the television news, and everywhere he went it rained!’

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