The Craig-Cefn-Parc television relay station is sited on Mynydd Gelliwastad to the west of Clydach in the Swansea Valley. It was originally built in 1978 as a fill-in relay for UHF analogue colour television. It consists of a 17 m self-supporting lattice mast standing on land which is itself about 160 m above sea level (and about 90 m above the village of Craig Cefn Parc which it serves). The transmissions are beamed to the northwest to avoid cross-channel interference with the Alltwen transmitter which is about 4 km to the northeast and which uses the same frequencies. The Craig-Cefn-Parc transmitter is owned and operated by Arqiva.
Craig-Cefn-Parc transmitter re-radiates the signal received off-air from Kilvey Hill about 10 km to the south. When it came, the digital switchover process for Craig-Cefn-Parc duplicated the timing at the parent station, with the first stage taking place on Wednesday 12 August 2009 and the second stage was completed on Wednesday 9 September 2009, with the Kilvey Hill transmitter-group becoming the first in Wales to complete digital switchover. After the switchover process, analogue channels had ceased broadcasting permanently and the Freeview digital TV services were radiated at an ERP of 2W each.
Channels listed by frequency
Analogue television
24 November 1978 - 1 November 1982
FrequencyUHFkWService400.006BBC Two Wales430.006HTV Wales460.006BBC One Wales
1 November 1982 - 12 August 2009 Craig-Cefn-Parc (being in Wales) transmitted the S4C variant of Channel 4.
FrequencyUHFkWService400.006BBC Two Wales430.006ITV1 Wales (HTV Wales until 2002)460.006BBC One Wales500.006S4C
Analogue and digital television
12 August 2009 - 9 September 2009 The UK's Digital Switchover commenced at Kilvey Hill (and therefore at Craig-Cefn-Parc and all its other relays) on 12 August 2009. Analogue BBC Two Wales on channel 40 was first to close, and ITV Wales was moved from channel 43 to channel 40 for its last month of service. Channel 43 was replaced by the new digital BBC A mux which started up in 64-QAM and at full power (i.e. 2 W).
FrequencyUHFkWServiceSystem400.006ITV1 WalesPAL System I430.002BBC ADVB-T460.006BBC One WalesPAL System I500.006S4CPAL System I
Digital television
9 September 2009 - present The remaining analogue TV services were closed down and the digital multiplexes took over on the original analogue channels' frequencies.
FrequencyUHFkWOperator430.002BBC A460.002Digital 3&4500.002BBC B
13 March 2013 As a side-effect of frequency-changes elsewhere in the region to do with clearance of the 800 MHz band for 4G mobile phone use, Craig Cefn Parc's "BBC B" multiplex will have to be moved from channel 50 to channel 40.
FrequencyUHFkWOperator400.002BBC B430.002BBC A460.002Digital 3&4
References
External links The Transmission Gallery: Craig-Cefn-Parc