Former RAF Mormond Hill

United Kingdom / Scotland / Strichen /
 NATO, radio broadcasting station, tropospheric scatter station, closed / former military
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RAF Mormond Hill was built in 1960 atop a 754ft high hill to serve as a major communications relay post on several military and commercial networks. The west side of the hilltop operated as Site 44 in the North Atlantic Radio System (NARS) and linked RAF Fylingdales to the US Mainland via troposcatter shots to Sornfelli Mountain on the Faroe Islands and Westward to Iceland before connecting to the DEW Line at Keflavik.

The east side of the site served as a relay site for communications on the ACE High (Allied Command Europe Highband) tropo network with the callsign UMOZ and connected the sites at Mossy Hill to the north and Brizlee Wood to the south.

The far eastern portion of the site was the site of two commercial troposcatter transmitters operated by British Telecom. One eastbound shot served the Piper Oilfield and its installations while a northbound shot linked the Scousburgh Hill site on the Shetland Islands to the Thistle, Brent, Frigg and Beryl oil and gas fields and installations to the mainland.

Today none of the troposcatter infrastructure remains as the transmitters and receivers were demolished as their respective networks went offline; NARS in 1992 followed by ACE High in 1996. The BT tropo links continued to operate into the 2000s with the final link going offline in 2014, and the site is now operated solely as a radio broadcast site.
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Coordinates:   57°36'10"N   2°1'54"W
This article was last modified 2 years ago