A History of Rugby Radio

Events leading to the building of Rugby Radio

To appreciate fully the history of Rugby Radio, one must go back in time to the year 1910, for it was in this year that the newly formed Marconi Company approached the Colonial Office for licences for the erection of eighteen wireless stations throughout the British Empire.

While the idea proved of great interest to the Government, the general scheme was found too be unacceptable as it was felt that an undertaking of this magnitude should be in the hands of the Government themselves, and not those of a private concern.

After more than two years deliberation an agreement was concluded with the Marconi Company for the erection of six high power stations by the Company for the Government. The details of the agreement, however, were severely criticised in Parliament and a Select Committee was appointed to report on it.

The Select Committee in turn recommended the appointment of a committee of experts to examine the question from a technical point of view. This committee recommended certain modifications and a revised agreement was concluded in July 1913, ratified by the House of Commons and subsequently the Dominion Governments concerned.

In December 1914, the Cabinet considered the question of the Imperial stations as affected by war, and as a result instructed the Postmaster General to terminate the contract with the Marconi Company as the Government had decided not to proceed with the Imperial Wireless Chain.

At that date the erection of masts at the English and Egyptian stations had practically been completed, and the mast material for the Indian station delivered.

At the end of 1919 the Committee were again sitting and after further wrangling with the Dominions who by then had definite thoughts of their own on how the scheme should be operated, an agreement for the Empire Chain of wireless stations was reached in 1922. meanwhile a makeshift service using arc transmitters was in operation between Leafield in Oxfordshire and Abu Zabul in Egypt.

Such was the position when the Coalition Government went out of office, but the situation was reconsidered in 1923 by the new Conservative Government, which decided to throw open Imperial Communications to private enterprise, but at the same time to erect a Government station equal in power to any in the world partly for strategic purposes and partly to prevent an absolute monopoly for the Marconi Company.

This decision was announced by Mr Bonar Law in the House of Commons on 5th March 1923 and with the purchase of 920 acres of land at Hillmorton in the same year the Post Office embarked upon what was probably its greatest single project up to that time, the building of Rugby Radio.

The Building of Rugby Radio

The site, approximately 340 feet above sea level and with a maximum variation in level throughout of 30 feet was chosen to accommodate the 16 masts each placed a quarter of a mile apart. The aerial system was designed, within the limits of structural possibilities, to give the best attainable radiation efficiency, the principal requirement being high ‘effective height’, high capacitance to earth and low earth resistance.

The aerial system consists of twelve 820 feet masts ( considerably higher than any masts previously constructed), spaced at quarter mile intervals, to form an irregular octagon with two extensions to the north, supporting cage aerials 12 feet in diameter. The aerial was constructed in two sections consisting of one large octagonal cage aerial, two miles long, supported on eight masts and another shorter cage aerial one and a quarter miles supported on six masts, two of the masts being used in common with both sections of the aerial. In all about 27 miles of copper cable were used in forming the aerial. The arrangement was such that the two sections could be connected together inside the station buildings to form one large aerial for extreme power.

The masts, stayed in three directions at five levels are of braced steel construction and of uniform triangular section with 10 feet sides. The base is in the form of an inverted tripod, the apex of this being supported by a dome and hemispherical joint and insulated from earth by means of porcelain insulators and a block of Swedish granite. Each mast complete with stays weighs 200 tones and a sway of 10 feet at the top is possible. All the masts are fitted with electrically driven winches for raising and lowering the aerial and also for operating an internal lift capable of carrying three persons.

When completed the aerial had a capacity of 0.45 mfd with an inductance of 385mH and a resistance of 0.4 ohms. The resistance to earth was 8 megohms. With all the masts insulated the aerial had an ‘effective height’ of 180metres and an efficiency of 29% at 16kHz.

The normal working voltage of the aerial was 165,000 volts r.m.s. and the current at the base of the aerial was about 750 amps. The earth system consisted of an open network containing about 120 miles of copper wire buried a few inches in the ground and occupying a space of 1600feet wide under the length of the aerial.

The aerial system remained substantially unmodified over a period of 30 years and only in 1956 was it necessary to renew the stays, a striking conformation of the soundness of judgement in the design which necessarily involved new techniques.

The tuning coils of the transmitter were wound with Litzendraht cables consisting of 6561 strands of No. 36 SWG copper wire, each strand insulated with enamel and one covering of cotton or silk. The formers were hexagonal spiders of American Whitewood, the external side being 7ft 9in in the largest former, and the turns were 6in. apart. Five spiders of eight turns each formed the aerial coil, three spiders of four turns each the primary, and one spider of two turns the coupling coil.

The transmitter itself was designed to work at 16kHz, the primary source being obtained from a valve maintained tuning fork vibrating at a frequency one-ninth of the radiated frequency. The output of the tuning fork stage was fed via a 50kW exciter stage to the final power amplifier units of which five were provided each containing eight 10kW water cooled valves in parallel. The five amplifier units could be paralleled to allow for one 500kW transmission with two spare units or two 300kW transmissions with one spare.

The High Tension anode supply to the power units had to be capable of withstanding a short circuit with impunity and consisted of three sets of machines each consisting of a 3 phase 416V motor driving two DC generators. Each generator could develop 250kW at 3000V and all the generators could be put in series thus giving 1500kW at 18000V. Under normal circumstances three power panels in parallel were used to giving an output of 500kW to the aerial.

The efficiency of the transmitter was 72% excluding the filament power or 65% including the filament power. The transmitter was opened for traffic on 1st January 1926, under the callsign GBR, and having worldwide coverage was an unqualified success.

Meanwhile a second transmitter was being installed be Western Electric (later to become ST&C Company in Britain) and experiments were carried out in radio telephony between the United Kingdom and America. The outcome of these tests was the first two-way telephone conversation across the Atlantic on 60kHz (GBT) and the inauguration of the Transatlantic Telephone service in January 1927.

A fourth DC generator was installed to furnish the EHT supply to this transmitter and was of similar design to the previous three except that it has an output of 12kV using two 6kV generators in series. The transmitter had a power of 300kW and operated on single sideband, with carrier suppressed - probably the first use in this country of a system now universally in use in carrier working on telephone lines.

The receiving station was originally at Wroughton, Wiltshire, and employed a Beverage aerial five miles long. Later in order to reduce the noise on the circuit a receiving station was installed much further north, at Cupar, Fifeshire; again a Beverage aerial was used but it was subsequently replaced by loops extending over an area of seven square miles.

The main capacitors for both transmitters were housed on the first floor and consisted of series / parallel combination using mica insulation and suspended in oil filled steel tanks.

The tuning coils were similar to those in use on GBR and part of the original aerial system was adapted for the transmission which could also be radiated on 68kHz (GBY)

A third transmitter of 50kW output was also built and utilised for telegraph broadcast to Europe, on a frequency of 78 kHz. Again water cooled valves were used and the transmitter was frequency controlled by means of a tuning fork vibrating at a seventeenth of the radiated frequency . Use was made of the two masts nearest the buildings to support a ‘T’ type cage aerial similar to those in use on the two previous transmitters.

The use of so many water cooled valves necessitated the building of two reservoirs each with a capacity of about quarter of a million gallons of water, and a heat exchange system to cool the distilled water flowing through the valves.

The Development of High Frequencies

At this time the potentialities of short wave communications were being realised and experiments carried out in the old farmhouse on the site paved the way to the opening of a second telephony channel to America in August 1928, using wavelengths between 16 and 32 metres. At such wavelengths construction of highly directive aerial arrays became practicable and radiated power could be concentrated in the direction of the receiving station resulting in a considerable reduction in the cost of establishing a radio telephone circuit.

After the establishment of short wave radio telephone communications from Rugby Radio a second building was set up half a mike from the original to cater for the installation of further short wave transmitters.

Rapid expansion of short wave radio telephone services followed equipment of the ‘A’ building in 1929 and plans for building further low frequency transmitters were dropped. By then the transmitter were frequency controlled by means of a temperature stabilised quartz crystal excited oscillator, followed by frequency multipliers and amplifiers up to a power of about 60kW and modulated by speech in the low power stages and this remained the basic design over a number of years. The filament, grid bias, and intermediate HT supplies were obtained from DC generators driven by AC synchronous motors whilst the final HT voltage was from thermionic valve rectifiers. Although, at this time, the merits of single sideband operation had been well proven it was not possible to control the frequencies of the HF oscillators with the necessary precision and double sideband was therefore used.

The aerials in general were various patterns of arrays of half wave elements and reflectors working on particular frequencies in fixed directions, and suspended from self supporting steel towers some 200feet in height.

The original high power thermionic valve rectifiers were replaced by much more efficient mercury vapour and later mercury arc types and demountable valves were introduced in the final power amplifiers.

the demountable valve, as its name may suggest , could be dismantled into its separate parts so that any component, e.g. Filament, grid, screengrid could be replaced when failure occurred. the components mentioned were rigidly mounted on the valve ‘head’ which in turn affixed to the anode unit, the complete assembly being carefully sealed at the joints, using bitumen for the mere permanent joints and plasticine treated with a special grease for the others. The assembled valve was continuously evacuated by means of two oil condensation pumps in cascade, backed by an oil immersion rotary pump evacuating to atmosphere.. The pumping equipment was capable of creating a vacuum pressure of 10-6 mm. In this type of valve water cooling was necessary on the filament and grid seals as well as on the anode and also on the oil condensation pumps. A valve of this principle using 18 grid filament assemblies set in a single anode jacket and devised for use on the long wave transmitter GBR and operated successfully for some time, taking the place of one power panel.

By 1937 sufficient advance had been made in the design of oscillators to permit the use of single sideband working on high frequencies and this type of communication was introduced on the high frequency TAT service in 1938.

The war years

With the advent of war in September 1939, the radio telephone overseas services with the exception of one or two particular services were suspended and a general hiatus set in until the transmitters were mostly converted for telegraph working and put to the use of the armed forces.. GBR in particular becoming of vital importance to the Navy and other shipping interests.

During the war years the station suffered two major setbacks, the first being at the end of January 1940, when , during a severe prolonged ice storm, the aerial became heavily overloaded with the weight of ice formed on it. Normally the release gear at the mastheads would have catered for this eventuality by automatically lowering the aerial, and thereby easing the strain. Unfortunately the automatic slipping gear had frozen so solidly as to be unable to operate and the aerial finally gave way under the strain. Very low fog persisted for some days frustrating efforts to investigate and carry out repairs and when at last it was possible to see the aerial system it was found that the extent of the damage was great. Many of the spreaders were distorted or broken beyond repair, insulators were shattered and almost a complete aerial rebuild was necessary.

The second disaster was of a greater magnitude and occurred one evening in March 1943 , when, without warning the woodwork on the roof of the main station housing the VLF transmitters became ignited due to radiation effect from GBR. Within a very few moments the whole roof was ablaze and despite the efforts of the staff and many fire brigades the transmitting room was almost gutted. Although very high winds prevailed at the time it was found possible to isolate the fire to the main transmitter room and so the major damage was suffered only by the transmitters, the power equipment remaining untouched.

For some time past uneasiness had been felt concerning the vulnerability of the station to damage from enemy action, and to off-set this another radio station housing a counterpart to GBR had been set up at Criggion in North Wales. This station was nearing completion at the time and by salvaging some equipment from GBR it was possible to resume the VLF transmissions from Criggion within a few days of the fire.

The results achieved by the new station were found to be far below those of GBR and the Admiralty expressed great dissatisfaction. The rebuilding of GBR was therefore given top priority and six months later the familiar callsign was again being broadcast around the world.

The Long Wave TAT transmitter was also rebuilt and modernised to some extent also the Low Power Transmitter GBV which had suffered relatively little damage was restored to service after slight modification.

During the rebuilding and re-equipping of the Main Building, the opportunity was taken to install a standby plant to supply power in the event of a total failure of incoming supplies. This was a directly coupled 1,150kW AC generator driven by a six cylinder blast injection diesel engine running at 300 rpm.

Further Development on HF and Power Supplies

At the end of the war the station was reconverted to cope with the rapidly increasing demand for overseas telephone circuits and it was soon found that the demand for those circuits was outstripping the available plant. Accordingly arrangements were made to purchase a further 700 acres of land adjoining the site and work commenced on the construction of a new building to house twenty eight transmitters of the most modern type.

The new station, probably the biggest ever built as a single project ,was well in advance of any other in existence at that time in techniques and in the extent to which it economised in manpower.

The transmitters were of 30kW peak power output capable of transmitting virtually all types of telephone and telegraph signal with continuous coverage from 4-30mc/s. the final and penultimate stages used grounded grid technique and negative feedback could be applied as required.

A two fold plan was followed in designing the building, First the low power equipment, the high power equipment, and the aerial switches were segregated. in different parts of the Building and, secondly, a large measure of automatic control and monitoring was introduced centred at the Central Control Position making the station easy to operate and of pleasing appearance. One large room houses the drive equipment for telephony and telegraphy, the carrier oscillators, and automatic monitors and landline equipment.

The transmitters are air cooled and installed in three halls converging on the Central Control Position, from where, by remote control, any transmitter can be operated on any one of six predetermined frequencies with the appropriate aerial. Hitherto in HF radio communications aerial switching had always been a problem and was usually performed manually. In the new building the problem was solved very satisfactorily by using 200 ohm balanced coaxial feeders to carry the power from the transmitters to remotely controlled motor driven switches in one or the other of two aerial switchrooms.

From this point each transmitter has immediate access to any one of six outgoing aerial feeders. This is quite sufficient for normal operations, but by manually altering the connections any aerial can be made available to any transmitter.

From the aerial switch room the aerial feeders pass first via balanced feeders inside the station, to aperiodic exponential line transformers and then via open wire feeders outside the station to some 70 aerials around the periphery of the site.

Most of the aerial are three wire rhombics, many of which are mounted in pairs one above the other 150 feet and 75 feet above ground on light lattice masts of Post Office No.1 type. Four Koomans arrays were set up on three 325 feet masts especially for use on the New Zealand service.

In some cases switches were fitted at the base of the aerials to permit the direction of transmitted signal to be reversed or dephased by remote control from the Central Control Position.

The monitoring is so arranged that continuous comparison is made between the incoming and outgoing telegraph signals, and when on telephony any variation of greater that 3dB in carrier power level will indicate a fault. Reflectometers are situated in the aerial feeders and constantly measure the voltage standing wave ratio at the output of the transmitter. Should this at any time exceed a predetermined ratio of 2:1 the transmitter will automatically shut down to prevent damage and a alarm signal will be given to the Central Control Position.

The new station ,or ‘B’ Building as it was called, was put into operation in 1953 and after its completion attention was given to refurbishing the original Short Wave ‘A’ Building. The majority of the transmitters in this building were relatively inefficient and somewhat limited in performance and arrangements were made to scrap nine of the oldest units and replace them by twelve modern more powerful air cooled transmitters. Although of a different make and design, they were with a single exception to all intents and purposes similar in scope to those already installed in the ‘B’ Building and allowed a fair measure of automation and Central Control to be introduced into the ‘A’ Building also. The one real point of difference in the transmitters installed in the ‘A’ building is that they have a unbalanced 75 ohm output and so are not able to make use of exponential line matching.

To match the 75 ohm unbalanced output to the 600 ohm balanced transmission line to the aerial a Balun was devised incorporating a 1:1 Balance to Unbalance transformer, a 4:1 balanced impedance transformer and two tandem stub compensated quarter wave transformer lines, mounted in a fibre glass container.

The half wave element aerials originally associated with the ‘A’ Building were mostly dismantled and replaced by the more versatile rhombic which, while not having the high gain of the dipole array, are less critical as to frequency and have good directional properties.

By this time the overall power load of the station had increased greatly beyond the capacity of the existing standby plant and arrangements were made to install additional power generating equipment to offset the increased demand. The large DC generators supplying the EHT supplies to the two high power VLF stations had begun to require more frequent attention and were being regarded as a maintenance liability. It was decided therefore that the DC machines should be scrapped and replaced by three six phase mercury arc rectifiers units which were of much smaller physical dimension than the machines they replaced.

This permitted the installation of two turbo supercharged engine alternator sets with a combined output of 1646 kW. The standby plant therefore has a combined capacity of 2796kW and at the time was the largest prime mover installation in use by the Post Office.

The new engines are English Electric type 12SV with a 12 hour rating of 1350 b.h.p. and a 30 second rating of 1630 b.h.p. at 750 r.p.m. The short time rating and special heavy flywheels fitted were required to deal with the peak loads imposed when GBR was keyed. The complete station was fed via a ring main unit by an 11kV supply from the Public Grid and the emergency supplies can be paralleled and synchronised in and out as required.

Development in VLF and LF

Almost since its inception Rugby has broadcast twice daily time signals on 16kHz from the Royal Greenwich Observatory and in 1951 was given the additional commitments in the nature of the transmission of the reference Modulated Standard Frequencies on behalf of the National Physical Laboratory.

Suitable equipment was installed in the Main Building and included three high-grade 100kHz crystal oscillators to provide signals accurate to within two parts in 10^7 of the assigned frequency. By means of frequency dividers and multipliers carrier frequencies were obtained at 60kHz for the Long Wave Telephony Transmitter (the GBT/GBY TAT service by now having ceased) and 2.5, 5, 10, 15 or 20 MHz for three of a set of four HF transmitters which were newly installed for the purpose. The equipment also provided for continuous inter-comparison and recording of the frequencies of the master oscillators in pairs; so that any divergence from normal on the part of any one of the oscillator chains might be detected and corrected. Continuity of operation being an essential feature of a Frequency Standard of this kind, the master oscillators were fully protected against any interruption of the power supplies.

In the first instance the crystals were quartz resonators cut in the GT mode but were later replaced by the Essen Ring type suspended on silken cords and having a higher degree of stability. The carrier and modulation frequencies were all derived from the crystal oscillator which was regulated to +/- 5 parts in 10^9 and calibrated with an accuracy of +/- 2 parts in 10^10 in terms of the caesium resonator at the National Physical Laboratory. At the introduction of the service the signals were radiated continuously on a 24 hour program on 2.5, 5, and 10 MHz and for one hour on 60kHz.

Except in a small region adjacent to rugby where the ground wave predominates the HF signals were received after reflection from the ionosphere. Variations in ionospheric conditions cause fluctuations in the received carrier frequencies which may amount to several parts in 10^7 thus limiting the accuracy of the MSF transmission on short waves.

LF and VLF transmissions are not subject to these same limitations and so the 60kHz transmission was soon found to be in great demand and coverage was extended to 24 hours daily. This high stability of transmission possible in the LF and VLF ranges began to assume great importance in other fields also, some new uses were found for the three original transmitters which at that time seemed largely to have outlived their usefulness.

The MSF Standard was arranged to generate the carrier frequency for the GBR transmitter but it was found that there was phase shift inherent in the transmitter due to the magnetic attraction between the aerial tuning coils creating movement of the inductances when the transmitter was keyed. This movement was overcome by enclosing the windings of the inductances in paxolin sheaths and automatic phase correction was also introduced. The transmitter was then returned to service with greatly increased stability of transmission.

At about this time tests had also been carried out on 68kHz ( GBY ) using various methods of keying the outcome of which was that the transmitter was requisitioned by the Admiralty for a 24 hours teleprinter service. To make the transmitter available for this service the Medium Power LF transmitter was retuned from 78 to 60 kHz and took over the MSF transmissions on LF.

In view of the great importance attached by the Admiralty to the VLF transmissions on GBR it was decided to rebuild the transmitter using more modern equipment and with increased power output. This was completed in 1967.

The new transmitter has retained the original aerial, tuning and power equipment, while the water cooled valves previously employed have been replaced by three vapour cooled amplifier valves for use singly or in combination. The modulator circuitry has been redesigned so that frequency shift as well as C.W. signals can be generated at speeds up to 72 bauds. The output power has been increased considerably and the transmitter is once more on the air after a facelift costing £150,000.

Also in 1967 the Essen Ring oscillators were superseded by the installation of a Rubidium Vapour Standard to permit frequencies accurate to 1 part in 100,000,000,000 to be radiated and for the station to generate more accurate time signals. 1 second in 3000 years.

MSF 60kHz radiates a 24 hours time signal service with a carrier power of 50kW to the aerial. Transmission type A1 negative modulation, callsign MSF at the hour. the carrier is interrupted by 100mS Seconds markers and 500mS minute markers, epoch being denoted by carrier drop-off.. MSF also radiates on 2.5, 5, and 10 MHz.

GBR on 16 kHz radiates four 5 minute Time Signals at 0255-0300, 0855-0900, 1455-1500, 2055-2100 GMT. In 1976 the frequency standard is now based on Caesium having an accuracy of 2 parts in 1,000,000,000,000. On December 31 1971 at 2359g the clocks were changed over from the old UTC time scale to the new UTC (Atomic Time) with the time signal coded to convey the difference between the epochs of the new UTC and the UTI. The code consists of double pulsing of certain pulses.

In September 1974 further development enabled a Binary-Coded-Decimal Time Code to be transmitted on MSF. This consists of a train of 13 ‘bits’ of B.C.D. data, giving Hour and minute of the day, inserted in the previous blank 500ms minute marker bit and followed by a Parity bit. Further refinements include automatic phase Control of the radiated signals, providing an even more accurate service.

Future Prospects

The special applications mow found possible due to the particular propagational properties of the low and very low frequencies seem to indicate that the future of the long wave transmitters is assured for many years to come. This assumption is borne out by the fact that more stations housing VLF transmitters have been erected within the last few years.

On the high frequencies the picture does not appear so promising, as Post Office policy over the past few years has been to transfer a large portion of the heavily loaded profit making overseas telephone traffic to the new submarine cable and satellite routes. as both of these systems offer a more reliable and higher grade world wide service than is possible with HF communications it seems clear the future of HF does not lie in this direction.

Most of the major overseas telephone and telegraph traffic previously carried by the Rugby High Frequency transmitters has now been transferred to satellite or submarine cable working as and when the particular links became established.

This has permitted the older and less flexible of the HF transmitters to be scrapped, so opening the way for modifications and re-equipping to cater for the anticipated demand for telex and telephone circuits to ships at sea as these facilities become available.

During fifty years of changing techniques the twelve tall masts of Rugby have dominated the local landscape: a Post Office monument to a job well done, and it is felt that many more years of radio history will be written before these engineering masterpieces cease to grace the surrounding countryside.

 

References

Government White Paper ‘Report of the Imperial Wireless

Telegraph Committee 1924’

R.V.Hansford D.Sc. ‘A modern High Power Long Wave Radio Transmitting Station for Telegraphy and Telephony using Thermionic Valves’

M JOHNSTON

1 January 1976

 

Notes by Alan Melia G3NYK (Jan 2003)

I am afraid I have no pictures of the station that do not have a copyright attached. I am negotiating for some copies of personal "snaps" by a young technician apprentice ( now sadly deceased ) who did his training at Hillmorton in the late 1930s. I can only refer you to the articles mentioned below which are lavishly illustrated.

For an animated personal recollection of life at Rugby read the article by Stan Brown G4LU in the January 2003 of Practical Wireless pp 24-27. Also see Radio Bygones June/July 2002 issue for a letter in response to Brian Faulkner's article based on the above release, and published in the April/May 2002 issue. Radio Bygones also carries an article on the Marconi long wave station at Caernarfon in the issue No.70 for April/May 2001. These and other historically interesting issues can be purchased from their web site at http://www.radiobygones.com . Practical Wireless also carries an article on the Somerton receiving site in the February 2003 issue, and in the September 2001 issue an article on the Criggion long wave transmitter site built during WWII as a standby for Rugby

Click here to see photographs of the aerial current monitoring equipment, and a memento acquired by G3NYK.(New)

Stop Press. April 10th 2006.

NPL has announced today that the continuing contract for the transmission of the 60kHz MSF time signals will move to VT Communications station at Anthorn in Cumbria in April 2007. This also coincides with the projected end of the Loran-C experiment and it is expected that Rugby Radio Station will be finally closed for transmission and the station demolished. There are Planning applications in progress already for the development of the Hillmorton site for housing. Its ready access to main north-south routes makes it a very desirable location, and despite the grazing sheep it is classified as a "Brown Field site". So ends 80 years of communications technology history.

A small book has been written by Peter Chambers in conjuction with the current Station Manager at Rugby. Details can also be found on the Telecomunications Heritage Group web site http://www.thg.org.uk/contents.htm

 

My booklet "SOMETHING IN THE AIR-A GUIDE TO THE RUGBY RADIO MASTS" traces the fascinating 76 year history of this transmitter
from the Morse days when it was built in 1924/25 to the present digital age. Read about the worlds first transatlantic phone
conversation and secret operations during The Second World War but not forgetting it’s present digital operations.

It's claims to fame are many.It was the world's most powerful transmitter at one time, with the highest masts and the larget
radio valve. The Prince of Wales (who became King Edward VIII) made a suprise visit and went up one of the masts!

The atomic clock, pips and speaking clock are sent from Rugby, even NASA has used it for it's space shots. Britain's submarines
are controlled from there.

And thats only some of of it's claims to fame to read more order your copy now.

To order a copy of "Something In The Air" please send a cheque/Postal Order(payable to 'Pete Chambers') for £1.50
to Something In the Air, 110 Richmond Steet, Coventry, CV2 4HY, UK

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