Sir, – John Fleming’s Irishman’s Diary musings about the Kippure transmission station (July 30th) brought back many memories about the time in 1956 when, as Radio Éireann TV and VHF planning engineer, I selected Kippure as VHF and TV site. The real fun was the month my team and I hauled our test equipment up the mountainside, with the help of local farmer Mr Byrne and his horse-drawn dray. For a period Kippure was capped with a number of old type P & T tents, a 35ft mast and the smell of hot sausages which kept us all alive and warm in the bitter east wind on the 2,300ft peak – which sometimes mist covered.
The team included Radio Éireann technicians Messrs O’Connor, Loughman, Dwyer, Casey, and when available some engineering students (one of them was John Sorohan later to become the chairman of RTÉ ). I recall with some amusement the arguments about the cost of the roads that I designed to service these stations. We adopted a system used by Mr Barnard, county engineer of Carlow County Council,
I recorded this bit of RTÉ history, including the other TV sites (eg Mount Leinster, Mullaghanish, Magghera. This report, a piece of social history, not to mind the technical aspects, has been lost by RTÉ.
The road up Kippure served its purpose and I am glad it provided John Fleming access for his misty musings. – Yours, etc,
Prof NOEL MULCAHY,
Killaloe, Co Tipperary.