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Below are photographs of the master station at San Xoan de Rio, GALICIA
( Northwestern Chain) taken in 1980. Click on any image to enlarge. Unless
otherwise stated, all photos were provided by Santiago Insua <deccanavigator(at)mundo-r.com>
As of June 4, 2004. Santiago has developed a web page for Decca Spain.
It is exclusively in Spanish but an English version may follow later. http://www.xente.mundo-r.com/decca
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The very leftmost antenna in the photo is the primary antenna, 110 meters in height. At the right are the three, 55 meter secondary antennas. If there was any problem with the primary antenna , any of the secondary antennas could be used. |
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One of the secondary antennas photographed from the top of the primary antenna. |
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Taken from atop the primary antenna, this photo gives a good view of the property. The small building was the Control Centre while the larger one was the living quarters for the station personnel and their families. |
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Control Center building. |
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Another view of the Control Center building |
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Santiago's father, Victor Manuel Insua Suarez, at the original console in the Control Center. It was updated with newer equipment in 1985. |
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The faceplate on this decometer bowl is labelled
in Spanish. Decca equipment for the Spanish marketplace was made by Marconi
Española under licence.
This specific bowl was salvaged from certain doom and held in safekeeping by a former Decca employee when the Northwest (4C) Master was upgraded in 1984. It was part the station's two monitoring receivers. This particular Spanish decometer also included an add-on modification. A box mounted on the bottom of the bowl contained a "Set Lane Indicator " pushbutton and a Sector Reference control. The purpose of these additional controls is not known at this time but it may be part of the special modification for the chain monitoring receivers. |
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A close-up view of the nameplate on the Marconi Española decometer. |
Select this link to see aerial views of the former Decca stations in Spain.
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| Taken in 1979, this was the master station for chain 6A located at Setenil de las Bodegas. The transmitters were the 1880. type. This view shows two receiver antennas mounted on the equipment room wall. These were Mkl2 type receiver, fiberglass antennas. Main transmitter antenna and coil house is shown behind. To the left is the receiving antenna for the microwave link from the remote station monitor. This site used a combination of remote receiver and local receiver for chain performance monitoring. (Photo by David Jones). |