Transmitting systems on the Brocken

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Transmitter chunks
Image of the object
In front is the transmission tower built in 1973. Behind it the old television tower from 1936 with a new radome.
Basic data
Place: Brocken mountain near Wernigerode
Country: Saxony-Anhalt
Country: Germany
Altitude : 1125  m above sea level NHN
Coordinates: 51 ° 48 ′ 0.6 ″  N , 10 ° 36 ′ 51.7 ″  E
Use: Telecommunication system , radio transmitter
Accessibility: Transmission system not accessible to the public
Owner : German radio tower
Data on the transmission system
Tower / mast 1
Height: 53 m
Construction time: 1936-1937
Operating time: since 1937


Tower / mast 2
Height: 115 m
Construction time: 1973
Operating time: since 1973
Last modification (transmitter) : 2007
Waveband : FM transmitter
Radio : VHF broadcasting
Send types: DVB-T2, DAB , cellular , directional radio , amateur radio service
Position map
Brocken transmitter (Saxony-Anhalt)
Transmitter chunks
Transmitter chunks
Localization of Saxony-Anhalt in Germany
The Brocken: buildings and facilities
Carrier platforms of the transmission tower for various antennas; View from the Brockenhotel's viewing platform
Transmission tower on the Brocken from 1973 in 2013
Transmitting systems in the summer of 1991 with the then still slim antenna support of the large transmitter mast. On the right the “mosque” formerly used by the Stasi.

There are extensive broadcasting systems on the Brocken in the Harz Mountains , including a total of twelve radio stations : nine VHF stations for analog and digital ( DAB ) radio and three television stations for broadcasting program packages ( bouquets ) in DVB-T2 HD digital format . There are also stations for mobile - and radio , a MSSR - radar station of the German Air Traffic Control (DFS) and two amateur radio relay .

history

Old television tower from 1936

Deutsche Reichspost began planning a network for the new medium of television (see also the history of television in Germany ) in 1934. In addition to the Paul Nipkow television station in Berlin-Witzleben , stations such as a. the Feldberg im Taunus , the Inselsberg in the Thuringian Forest as well as the Zugspitze , Schneekoppe and the Brocken are planned. The first German television tower was built on its summit between 1936 and 1937 and is now used as a Brocken hotel, observation tower and radar station .

Starting in 1939, the tower , together with the television tower on the Großer Feldberg and the Inselsberg transmitter , was supposed to distribute television programs in north-western and central Germany, something that did not happen after the start of the Second World War . Instead, he was from NS - Air Ministry accepted that there for the Air Force in addition to acoustic listening devices for aircraft tracking various radio-technical equipment for keeping the fighter planes as relay stations and Peil left sender and receiver, build. In the last years of the war, powerful transmitters were also installed on the Brocken, which were supposed to interfere with the communication and navigation technology of enemy aircraft.

Originally the tower was 52 m high. The lower nine floors are made of reinforced concrete, the upper seven with the gable roof were a wooden structure in which the antennas were. After the end of the war they were dismantled and the tower, which was shortened in 1948, was given a flat roof, on which a tubular slot antenna was placed in 1953 , which was used from July 1, 1955 for the DFF television station .

Today the tower has a height of 40 m on nine floors and has a glazed viewing platform accessible by elevator. In contrast to modern television towers, the tower has a square cross-section and looks more like a high-rise building. The arrangement of the panes in the glazed viewing platform is reminiscent of the restaurant in the Berlin radio tower . In the first half of the 1990s, transmission operations were relocated to the tubular steel tower and the 43-meter-high transmission mast was removed from the tower roof. The old television tower received a radome in which a radar system from the German air traffic control is located.

Steel tube tower from 1973

Even in GDR times , the Brocken was - despite its location in the restricted border area - the location of TV and radio stations. Since the old television tower no longer met the growing radio requirements, a new 123 m high transmission tower was built in 1973. This tower is a tubular steel tower standing on four legs, in which there are also cable ducts and access options, which carries three radio link platforms just above its four-foot construction. In contrast to the old television tower, it is not open to the public. In the 1990s, the lower part of the antenna support was significantly increased in diameter.

The originally 23 meter high self-supporting GRP antenna cylinder placed on the tower was replaced by a 15 meter high cylinder in 2007, so that the tower with the GRP cylinder is 115 m high today.

Both towers are owned by Deutsche Funkturm (DFMG), a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom based in Münster .

Systems from the SED, secret services and military in GDR times

In the northeast corner of the Brocken plateau surrounded by a concrete wall, there was a so-called A-tower that was demolished in 1998 . It served as a relay point in the directional radio network of the SED party for connections to SED district lines in the Harz region. Furthermore, there was a dark green-underlined (the OTS technical operative sector ) constructed and from the head office clearing the Stasi unused, high steel lattice tower, which was equipped with a battery in Western directions pointing antennas in the vicinity of the highest point southwest of the chunks station. This was how the Stasi received radio signals from agents working in the West. The MfS initially occupied a floor in the old television tower, and also places on the platforms of the new transmission tower. Today's Brocken Museum including the Radom (called “the mosque” in East German jargon) was built from 1983 to 1986 for the State Security. The partially still existing MfS eavesdropping technology in the radome can be viewed. For Main Department III of the MfS there was also a large radome standing on the ground west of the large transmission mast, as well as three other, small radomes southwest and near the mast. 21 men worked in three shifts for the MfS radio reconnaissance. Radio reconnaissance of the NVA were temporarily, z. B. during major NATO maneuvers, at the summit. The planning of a permanent NVA system for radio relay reconnaissance from 1992 on the Königsberg (secondary summit) was overtaken by the fall of the Wall. Two other, larger radomes were operated by Soviet troops who were subordinate to their GRU military intelligence and were the westernmost outpost of the Soviet Union. These were present on the mountain in several barracks west of the train station, where the strongest Brockensturm recorded to date at 263 km / h tore down the entire roof of one of them. The high-performance wiretapping systems had the cover names "Urian" (MfS) and "Jenissej" ( GSSD / GRU).

Range

The exposed geographic location in Saxony-Anhalt makes the location particularly attractive for broadcasting VHF radio. The radio of the GDR could be received over the Brocken in large parts of the old Federal Republic . The eastern half of Lower Saxony is covered with the metropolitan areas of Hanover and Braunschweig , North and East Hesse , northern outskirts of Bavaria , eastern North Rhine-Westphalia to the foothills of the Ruhr area , Bremen and partly also Hamburg and West Berlin . In East Germany , the stations covered almost all of Saxony-Anhalt, the greater Leipzig area in Saxony and large parts of Thuringia .

The Brocken transmitter has one of the largest coverage areas in Germany and, along with the Wendelstein transmitter in Bavaria, is the German transmitter system with the widest range and the most powerful in the UHF / VHF range. 25 million people live in the theoretical catchment area of ​​the Brocken station, which is exceeded by no other station in Germany. The overreach, especially in inversion weather conditions , was legendary in GDR times, so the Brocken station could also be received in Scandinavia in some cases .

Channel

FM radio

The information program Radio DDR I was broadcast over 89 MHz until German reunification ; After a transitional period (Radio Aktuell as the successor to Radio DDR I with an identical broadcasting area), it was operated by three private broadcasters, of which Radio Brocken was extremely well known. From May 2, 2001, the DAB program Project 89.0 was broadcast digitally in parallel and for promotional purposes. Since August 24, 2003, 89.0 RTL has been broadcasting via it , which does not use any other VHF frequencies and, due to the large transmission area, is in fact - if not legally - one of the few German multi-country private broadcasters.

Other frequencies are the 94.6 MHz (formerly the cultural and educational program Radio DDR II with regional program Sender Magdeburg; today MDR Sachsen-Anhalt ), the 97.4 MHz (formerly Germany transmitter or voice of the GDR , then Germany radio culture, now Germany radio Kultur ), the 101.4 MHz (formerly youth radio DT64 , now radio SAW ), the 91.5 MHz (formerly Berliner Rundfunk , now MDR Jump ) and the frequency with the greatest reach in Germany, the 89.0 MHz ( 89.0 RTL ).

Although the broadcasting location is in what is now Saxony-Anhalt and thus in the licensing area of ​​the Sachsen-Anhalt Media Authority , there is the curiosity that the private broadcasters 89.0 RTL and radio SAW , which are only licensed for Saxony-Anhalt , parts of other federal states (western Brandenburg , southern Lower Saxony , North Hesse , East North Rhine-Westphalia , North West Saxony , North Thuringia ) and take this expanded transmission area into account specifically to expand the advertising market.

watch TV

For the state-run GDR television ( Deutscher Fernsehfunk / DFF, from 1972: Television of the GDR), the Brocken was an important TV station location. In large parts of the old Federal Republic, the two GDR television programs could be received from the Brocken station. Because of the use of the French SECAM process for GDR color television , only black and white reception was possible in West Germany without an expensive multi-standard receiver or the installation of a PAL / SECAM decoder ("GDR color") .

Because today the third MDR program on the Brocken broadcasts the Saxony-Anhalt regional program according to its country of origin, there are new TV broadcasting systems with small coverage areas for the respective regional programs for Thuringian and Saxon supply areas that received their television reception from the Brocken in GDR times been erected. The same procedure was followed for VHF radio.

Until the switch to DVB-T on October 9, 2007, analog television was broadcast.

Amateur radio

Three amateur radio relays are installed on the Brocken . The QTH locator of the stations is JO51HT.

  • ATV relay DB0HEX ( RX : 1251 MHz, 2380 MHz, 10420 MHz; TX : 1280 MHz ( DATV ), 10.180 MHz, 24.100 MHz)
  • D-Voice relay DB0BRO (RX / TX: 144.975 / 145.575 MHz (C4FM), 431.4375 / 439.0375 MHz (C4FM), 431.5375 / 439.1375 MHz (DMR), 431.8375 / 439.4375 MHz (D-Star))
  • FM relay ( 70 centimeter band ) DB0HSB (RX: 431.725 MHz, TX: 439.325 MHz), transmission power 8 watts

Current programs and frequencies

Analog radio (FM)

Six FM radio programs are broadcast:

Frequency  
(MHz) 		program RDS PS RDS PI Regionalization ERP  
(kW) 		Antenna pattern
round (ND) / directional (D) 		Polarization
horizontal (H) / vertical (V)
94.6 MDR Saxony-Anhalt MDR_S-AN D4D1 Magdeburg 60 ND H
91.5 MDR Jump MDR_JUMP D3C2 - 100 ND H
107.8 MDR culture __MDR___ _CULTURE_ D3C3 - 10 ND H
97.4 Deutschlandfunk culture Dlf_Kult D220 - 100 ND H
101.4 Radio SAW _S_A_W__ / __ * S * A * W * _ / * S_A_W * _ D5D9 (regional), 
D3D9 		Magdeburg / Altmark 100 D (30 ° -0 °) H
89.0 89.0 RTL 89.0_RTL D0DB - 60 ND H

Digital radio ( DAB + )

Three transmitters each broadcast a DAB block in vertical polarization in single-frequency operation with other DAB transmitters.

block Programs
(data services) 		ERP  
(kW) 		Antenna diagram
round (ND),
directional (D) 		Single frequency network (SFN)
5C
DR Germany
(D__00188) 		DAB block of media broadcast : 2 ND
6B
MDR S-ANHALT
(D__00309) 		DAB block of the MDR : 3 D. Brocken , Burg , Dequede , Kulpenberg , Pettstädt (Weißenfels) , Petersberg , Schneidlingen, Wittenberg


11C 
S-Anhalt
(D__00198) 		DAB block of media broadcast : 2 D. Brocken , Burg , Petersberg , Schneidlingen, Wittenberg / Gallunberg


Digital television (DVB-T2 HD)

The conversion of the transmitter chunks to the standard DVB-T2 HD with HEVC image coding was on 29 March 2017. On three channels is a program package ever ( bouquet ) in simulcast transmitted (Single Frequency Network) with other sites.

freenet TV , the fee-based DVB-T2-HD platform from Media Broadcast , is not broadcast by Brocken, nor by Torfhaus or Harz-West .

channel Frequency (  
MHz) 		Multiplex Programs in multiplex ERP  
(kW) 		Antenna pattern
/ round (ND)
directed (D) 		Polarization
horizontal (H) /
vertical (V) 		Modulation method FEC Guard interval Bit rate  
(Mbit / s) 		Single frequency network (SFN)
45 666 MDR 1 (ARD) 50 D (0-230 °) V 64-QAM 3/5 19/256 23.6 Magdeburg , Brocken
34 578 MDR 2 (ARD) 50 D (0-230 °) V 64-QAM 3/5 19/256 23.6 Magdeburg , Brocken
37 602 Substream 0:

ZDF

( ZDFmobil )

Substream 1: MEDIA BROADCAST

Substream 0:

Substream 1:

50 ND V 64-QAM 3/5 19/128 22nd Magdeburg , Wittenberg , Brocken

 1) To receiveARD-alpha HD (Internet)andSWR BW HD (Internet), anhbb-TV capabledevice is required.

Previous programs and frequencies

Digital television ( DVB-T )

The DVB-T -Ausstrahlungen the Brocken running since 9 October 2007 and were in the single-frequency operation (Single Frequency Network) with other transmitter sites. They were discontinued on March 29, 2017, 12:00 AM CEST.

channel Frequency (  
MHz) 		Multiplex Programs in multiplex ERP  
(kW) 		Antenna pattern
/ round (ND)
directed (D) 		Polarization
horizontal (H) /
vertical (V) 		Modulation method FEC Guard interval Bit rate  
(Mbit / s) 		Single frequency network (SFN)
29 538 ARD Digital (MDR) 50 D. V 64-QAM 2/3 1/4 19.91 Brocken , Magdeburg (city)
34 578 ARD regional (MDR) Saxony-Anhalt 50 D. V 64-QAM 2/3 1/4 19.91 Brocken , Magdeburg (city), Dequede
30th 546 ZDFmobil 50 D. V 16 QAM 
(8 k mode) 		2/3 1/4 13.27 Brocken , Magdeburg (city), Wittenberg

Analog television ( PAL )

Up until the switch to digital television in 2007, three analogue basic network stations broadcast programs from ARD and ZDF .

channel Frequency  
(MHz) 		program ERP
(kW) 		Transmission diagram
round (ND) /
directional (D) 		Polarization
horizontal (H) /
vertical (V)
6th 182.25 The First (MDR) 100 ND H
34 575.25 MDR television (Saxony-Anhalt) 400 ND H
49 695.25 ZDF 390 ND H

Similar towers in this series

Transmitter in the immediate vicinity

In Lower Saxony, the transmission systems are on the peat house within sight of the Brocken in a westward direction . From there, the NDR broadcasted ARD television, ZDF and various radio programs to the GDR. Today radio and television programs continue to be broadcast from this location. However, the ZDF package is missing from DVB-T. It is possible at many receiving locations with a common antenna system to receive all transmitters from both transmitter locations at the same time.

Web links

Commons : Transmitters on the Brocken  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.manfred-bischoff.de/Brocken.htm accessed on August 10, 2011.
  2. ↑ IBK fibertec: References - Self-supporting GRP antenna cylinders , accessed on September 9, 2017.
  3. ↑ Central German landmarks: "How the Brocken became a fortress", February 5, 2013, 8.45 pm, at the mdr
  4. ↑ manfred-bischoff.de
  5. ↑ Object URIAN - listening station Brocken , on geschichtsspuren.de
  6. ↑ Radio scene archive. Retrieved January 2, 2017 .
  7. ↑ State Media Authority Saxony-Anhalt. Retrieved January 2, 2017 .
  8. ↑ Brocken DB0HSB ( Memento of the original from May 12, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.funkbetrieb.de