Jodrell Bank

Travelling around the Cheshire lanes there is one object that catches everyone's attention, visitor or resident, whenever it is glimpsed ...

... across the fields, through the trees or in the middle distance from the hills. 'There's Jodrell Bank' is the silent or spoken observation.

More correctly described as the Radio Telescope at the Jodrell Bank Observatory of Manchester University.

Getting closer to the site allows the Lovell Telescope (named for Sir Bernard Lovell the driving force of the project from 1945) to become more dominant.

A lay-by before the the turn-off for the site where I had stopped to take the last picture filled up quickly when these two stretch limousines arrived. They disgorged a clutch of nubile young ladies, complete with filled champagne flutes, who had stopped for a 'ciggy-break'. I presumed so, because most immediately lit cigarettes with obvious pleasure. They couldn't have been celebrities, though: they gave me a smile and a wave as I went on my way.

At the entrance to the site the size and the structure of the Lovell Telescope is becoming increasingly impressive.

Close to, as close as allowed, the 250 foot height seems far more with circling buzzards and crows attracted to the structure and emphasizing its size by their actions.

The central tower in the dish is the height of a multi-storey building at about 100 foot (I guess), and has at its top the focus box housing the receiver held at a very low temperature.

An excited young visitor dashing back to Mum and behind Dad the ladder to the access lift up to the top of the tower.

Access to the bowl is only possible when it is out of use and 'parked', when it is pointing vertically and with the rim horizontal. In this picture the walkway is the broader strip alongside the girder angling down to the centre of the dish on the left edge of the picture and in a position with its tower-end nearly level with the top of the axis ring by the tower. When parked, I suspect it will be positioned by the overhanging lean-to on this left face of the tower housing.

The current state of the Lovell Radio Telescope has evolved through modification from the original that was first operated in 1957. Here can be clearly seen the two circumferential girders supporting the dish. These replaced the single circumferential non-supporting girder which functioned only as a stabiliser preventing oscillation in the wind. It had been found that the weight of the dish was too great for the axis alone to support. Additionally a second shallower angled skin was mounted in the dish to improve its performance.

Continued in Part II

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