The Wrexham-Rhos transmitting station is a digital television relay of Moel-y-Parc, and forms part of the Wales television region. Despite its name, the station is situated in Moss Village and serves the city of Wrexham, the northern area of Wrexham County Borough and south-western Flintshire. It is a free-standing lattice tower structure serving around 85,000 homes which are unable to receive broadcasts from Moel-y-Parc due to Hope Mountain.
This area is traditionally served by English transmitters at Winter Hill and The Wrekin, which have historically provided English-language channels Channel 4 and Channel 5, plus the digital terrestrial services ONdigital/ITV Digital (from 1998 to 2002) and Freeview from 2002 onwards. Wrexham-Rhos was constructed to coincide with the 1977 National Eisteddfod in Wrexham, initially providing S4C and BBC One Wales, later joined by HTV Wales in 1997 and BBC Two Wales in 1999.https://web.archive.org/web/20070930034741/http://www.ofcom.org.uk/static/archive/itc/uploads/HTV_APR_text.doc ITC: WALES AND THE WEST OF ENGLAND: HTV (archived copy from Internet Archive)
The DAB digital radio transmitter on the site was switched on in 2013. It had a temporary outage in 2017.
Services available
Analogue television
1977 - 1 November 1982 FrequencyUHFkWService390.2BBC1 Wales670.4HTV Wales
1 November 1982 - 30 March 1997 FrequencyUHFkWService390.2BBC1 Wales670.4S4C
30 March 1997 - 1999 FrequencyUHFkWService320.2HTV Wales390.2BBC1 Wales670.4S4C
1999 - 2000 FrequencyUHFkWService280.2BBC2 Wales320.2HTV Wales390.2BBC1 Wales670.4S4C
2000 - 28 October 2009 Prior to analogue switch-off, Wrexham-Rhos broadcast four of the five national terrestrial stations. Channels 1 to 3 were broadcast at 200 W ERP, while S4C was broadcast at 400 W. In 1998, due to the upcoming launch of ONdigital from neighbouring transmission site, Winter Hill, S4C from the relay was required to change frequency (from UHF Channel 67) two years later. A message was displayed telling viewers to re-tune their televisions of the channel were carried for a couple of months. When the original frequency was switched off, the power on the newer version was increased.
FrequencyUHFkWService250.4S4C280.2BBC2 Wales320.2HTV Wales390.2BBC1 Wales
Analogue and digital television
28 October 2009 - 25 November 2009 BBC2 was ceased on UHF 28. BBC A launched on the old BBC2 Frequency. FrequencyUHFkWServiceSystem250.4S4CPAL System I280.08BBC ADVB-T320.2HTV WalesPAL System I390.2BBC1 WalesPAL System I
Digital television
25 November 2009 - present At present, the station broadcasts three of the six national digital terrestrial television multiplexes on the "Freeview Lite" service. The station switched over to digital transmissions from analogue throughout November 2009, and remaining analogue services ceased at midnight on 25 November 2009. BBC A and Digital 3&4 broadcast using MPEG2 compression on DVB-T standards, whilst the HD multiplex, BBC B, uses DVB-T2.
FrequencyUHFkWOperator220.08Digital 3&4250.08BBC B280.08BBC A
Analogue radio (FM VHF) FrequencykWService88.0 MHz1.4Heart North and Mid Wales95.4 MHz0.7BBC Radio Wales103.4 MHz1.4Capital North West and Wales
Digital radio (DAB) FrequencyBlockkwOperator215.072 MHz10D3kWMuxCo North East Wales & West Cheshire†
On air date March 2013Radio Listeners Guide 2010
See also Winter Hill transmitting station The Wrekin transmitting station
References
External links mb21 - The Transmission Gallery - photographs ukfree.tv Shutdown plans for Wrexham-Rhos