ITN SNG Terminal

This was the first Fly-Away SNG Terminal in the UK.

All looks a little crude by todays standards - but the was bleeding edge of newsgathering technology at the time (circa 1985).

The antenna a single piece 1.8m Dual-Offset which was developed by GEC Marconi - sold with the product name of 'NewsHawk'

Being a single piece, shipping was a bit of a challenge. The antenna and El/Az mount had an attached baseframe, but as supplied it only had a soft cover.

The associated electronics comprised a TWTA from EEV in a flight case, with a second case housing the Modulator, UpConverter and a receiver, both of which needed to be in close proximity to the antenna. Naturally there then was a number of other devices such as Video and Audio monitoring, VTR (and TBC !) for tape replay, test generator etc required to make this a useful system for newsgathering use.

After a while it was decided to build a trailer, where the antenna was on the top and the electronics below it. That made deployment in the UK a lot simpler.