Wrexham-Rhos transmitting station


The Wrexham-Rhos transmitting station is a digital television relay of Moel-y-Parc, and forms part of the Wales television region. Despite its name, the station is situated in Moss Village and serves the town of Wrexham, the northern area of Wrexham County Borough and south-western Flintshire. It is a free-standing lattice tower structure serving around 85,000 homes which are unable to receive broadcasts from Moel-y-Parc due to Hope Mountain.
This area is traditionally served by English transmitters at Winter Hill and The Wrekin, which have historically provided English-language channels Channel 4 and Channel 5, plus the digital terrestrial services ONdigital/ITV Digital and Freeview from 2002 onwards. Wrexham-Rhos was constructed to coincide with the 1977 National Eisteddfod in Wrexham, initially providing S4C and BBC One Wales, later joined by HTV Wales and BBC Two Wales in 1997.

Services available

Analogue television

1977 - 1 November 1982

1 November 1982 - 1997

1997 - November 1998

November 1998 - 28 October 2009

Prior to analogue switch-off, Wrexham-Rhos broadcast four of the five national terrestrial stations. Channels 1 to 3 were broadcast at 200 W ERP, while S4C was broadcast at 400 W. In 1998, due to the upcoming launch of ONdigital from neighbouring transmission site, Winter Hill, S4C from the relay was required to change frequency. A message was displayed telling viewers to re-tune their televisions of the channel were carried for a couple of months. When the original frequency was switched off, the power on the newer version was increased.
FrequencyUHFkWService
250.4S4C
280.2BBC Two Wales
320.2ITV1 Wales
390.2BBC One Wales

Analogue and digital television

28 October 2009 - 25 November 2009

Digital television

25 November 2009 - present

At present, the station broadcasts three of the six national digital terrestrial television multiplexes on the "Freeview Lite" service. The station switched over to digital transmissions from analogue throughout November 2009, and remaining analogue services ceased at midnight on 25 November 2009. BBC A and Digital 3&4 broadcast using MPEG2 compression on DVB-T standards, whilst the HD multiplex, BBC B, uses DVB-T2.
FrequencyUHFkWOperator
220.08Digital 3&4
250.08BBC B
280.08BBC A

Analogue radio (FM VHF)

Digital radio (DAB)

On air date March 2013f