Goonhilly Downs, Cornwall - Dish aerial - Colourmaster postcard c.1970s

Postcard
• Picture / Image:  Dish Aerial, Goonhilly Downs, Cornwall
• Publisher:  Colourmaster (R80661)
• Postally used:  no
• Stamp:  n/a
• Postmark(s): n/a
• Sent to:  n/a
• Notes / condition: 

Please ask if you need any other information and I will do the best I can to answer.

Image may be low res for illustrative purposes - if you need a higher definition image then please contact me and I may be able to send one.

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UK (incl. IOM, CI & BFPO): 99p

Europe: £1.60

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NOTE: All postcards are sent in brand new stiffened envelopes which I have bought for the task. These are specially made to protect postcards and you may be able to re-use them. In addition there are other costs to sending so the above charge is not just for the stamp!

I will give a full refund if you are not fully satisfied with the postcard.

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Text from the free encyclopedia WIKIPEDIA may appear below to give a little background information (internal links may not  work) :

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Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station is a large telecommunications site located on Goonhilly Downs near Helston on the Lizard peninsula in Cornwall, England, UK. Owned by BT Group plc, it was at one time the largest satellite earth station in the world, with more than 25 communications dishes in use and over 60 in total. The site also links into undersea cable lines.

Its first dish, Antenna One (dubbed ""Arthur""), was built in 1962 to link with Telstar. It was the first open parabolic design and is 25.9 metres in diameter and weighs 1,118 tonnes. After Pleumeur Bodou (Brittany) which received the first live transatlantic television broadcasts from the United States via the Telstar satellite at 0H47 GMT on July 11, 1962, Arthur received his first video in the middle of the same day. It is now a Grade II listed structure and is therefore protected.

The site has also played a key role in communications events such as the Muhammad Ali fights, the Olympic Games, the 1969 moon landings and 1985's Live Aid concert.^[1]

The site's largest dish, dubbed ""Merlin"", has a diameter of 32 metres. Other dishes include Guinevere, Tristan and Isolde after characters in Arthurian legend, much of which takes place in Cornwall.

The earth station is powered by the National Grid. If power fails, all essential equipment will run off huge batteries for up to 20 minutes, during which time four one-megawatt diesel generators will take over. The nearby wind generator farm is not part of the complex.

On 12 September 2006, BT announced it would shut down satellite operations at Goonhilly in 2008, and move them to Madley Communications Centre in Herefordshire, making that centre BT's only earth station and the biggest in the world.^{[citation needed]}

Until Easter 2010 the site had a visitor centre inside which the Connected Earth gallery told the history of satellite communications. There were many other interactive exhibits, a cafe, a shop and one of Britain's fastest cybercafés (a one gigabit pipe and a theoretical maximum speed per iMac of 100 Mbit). There were also tours around the main BT site and into the heart of Arthur.

At its prime, the site attracted around 80,000 visitors a year, but in March 2010 BT announced that the visitor centre would be ""Closed for Easter and beyond, until further notice.""^[2][3]

type=printed postcards

theme=topographical: british

sub-theme=england

county/ country=cornwall/ scilly isles

number of items=single

period=1945 - present

postage condition=unposted