Brougher Mountain Transmitting Station

Situated right on the border between Fermanagh and Tyrone, serving the entire South West of Ulster

At present, the site is home to 6 individual masts in a variety of sizes and styles.

As of 2025, this site is home to:

In the past it also transmitted:

The oldest masts are the pair within the Arqiva compound at the western end of the hill. This is where the main broadcast equipment is housed, transmitting a Freeview, DAB and FM service to the area.

The DTT service coverage is further extended by its 4 repeaters. If you're thinking "4? Aren't there 5?", you'd be incorrect - Gortnalee, despite being much physically closer to Brougher, actually relays Strabane, which in turn relays Londonderry, which originally relayed Limavady, but is now line-fed. Still with me? Good. Moving on...

Whilst impossible to photograph, it is possible to see the aircraft warning lights of the Strabane transmitter from Brougher. Obviously from this distance it is very tiny but you can make out the individual lights on a good evening.

Q Radio has a taller stayed mast, whilst the Ulstercom mast is a triangular cross-sectioned free-standing tower.

Q Radio & Ulstercom Masts. Until recently there was a large VHF yagi towards the bottom of this tower pointing vaguely towards Omagh. On my latest visit it was lying at the foot of the mast, along with some folded dipoles, so presumably now surplus to requirements!

Gerald McCloughan has got in touch to explain: "When this station launched in March 2002 (as Q101 West), there was a VHF Band I link between the TX site and the studios in Market Street, Omagh; If I recall correctly the frequency was 53.75 MHz. I'm not sure if it was the main link to the TX site or if another primary link was in place. The VHF Band I aerial is still in place in Omagh but is presumably no longer used, especially as all broadcasting is now from Belfast with the former studios in Omagh now just an advertising sales office. This would explain the VHF Band I receive aerial at Brougher now being removed from the mast."

Ulstercom seem to look after radio links for businesses, two-way radio and the like. Most of their antennas look VHF, except a small array of 4 folded dipoles.

Q Radio has a newer 'pre-fab' type building, with a satellite dish and small generator outside. Cables run up one of the mast stays from the building. Ulstercom have an older concrete building with cables running up the side to their mast. A sign on the side offers contact information for them.

Q Radio/Ulstercom transmitter buildings. Q Radio is fed from Intelsat 901, you can see the dish, complete with anti-icing heater, beside the transmitter building.

Close-up view of the Q-Radio mast. It consists of a long steel pole with a noticeable bend in it. It has steps all the way up, like some kind of single-poled ladder.

View up the Q Radio mast. There's nothing to stop you climbing it. Although they'd probably get a bit upset with you if they found out. I'd rather not, looking at the bend in the middle. As of 2025 this mast has been replaced with a shorter square cross-section lattice mast.

The upper antenna consists of four vertical poles suspended out from the side of the mast. The lower one looks like two arrows pointing away from each-other, set at an angle apart.
Close up of the Q Radio antennas. I've no idea which is which. I understand the lower pair are circularly polarised, while the upper array are vertically polarised.

Wide view of the masts. The Q Radio mast is fixed the the ground by two additional smaller poles at it's base. A wind farm is visible on the distant hill.

Wooden pole with about a dozen small microwave dishes. These are arranged in two clusters, top and bottom, pointing in all directions. At the very top there are some small 'horn' style antennas.
This smaller wooden mast has appeared recently. It appears to support multiple point-to-point WiFi links. There are multiple point-to-point WiFi providers around here, and loads of microwave dishes, so it's possible there are multiple providers around.

QR/DT mast, with similar microwave antennas and a large VHF yagi antenna. There's also a wire hanging down haphazardly from the highest of the dishes.
Here's an older photo of Q Radio. It looks like the above microwave links used to be on their mast, along with the afforementioned VHF yagi, but have now been moved to their own mast, and the yagi scrapped.

Transmitters at the other side of the mountain, close the the peak. These are a lot more secure than the aforementioned masts, having large metal fences with spiked tops around them.
Arqiva and microwave masts. The microwave mast apparently belongs to Net1, who use it to distribute broadband connections in the Fermanagh area.

The microwave mast. It has a pre-fab building and a building constrcted from corrugated sheeting at the base within the compund - a vertical cable tray mounted on poles carries cables across the yard from the building to the mast. A number of CCTV cameras are visible inside the compund.
Looking through the fence. You can't see it in the photo but there's a TV receive antenna and satellite dish mounted on the pre-fab building. Apparently this is used to feed Net1's IPTV service.

Two large, free-standing towers, 3 satellite dishes and a sprawling concrete building form surrounded by a tall chain-link fence make up the Arqiva conpound. The building has some odd obtrusions on the roof which I can only assume are for ventilation purposes. Another distant wind farm is visible in the distance.
Arqiva compound with satellite dishes. Mast A on the right supports the reserve DTT antenna and main FM array, along with an old microwave dish and some trough and log-periodic antennas pointing at Divis. Mast B was originally half this height, but was extended at the Digital Switchover to support the new primary DTT antanna. It also carries multiple mobile cells.

Two very large (~2m diameter) and more standard sized satellite dishes, pointed in different directions. They are attached to large metal stands which are bolted the the concrete floor. These are actually just outside the main compund.
Closer view of the receive dishes. The wee guy in the middle wasn't actually connected to anything, but in more recent visits it's been connected back to the TX building via a long coax poked through the security fence. These are likely pointed at Intelsat 901 and Astra 2E for radio and the BBC's "SATBACK" TV backup link.

Looking up Mast B. Some vertical mobile cell antennas are visible, as well as microwave dishes of various sizes. Some of them appear to be damaged. There's a large group of panel antennas at the very top for DTT.
There is a lot of stuff on Mast B. I assume the cluster of feeds up the centre are for DTT. The rest, frankly I have no clue.

View of the opposite side of Mast B. More of the same, microwave antennas and mobile masts.
Other side of B

Mast A. This features a number of trough antennas as well as folded and normal dipole antennas. An access ladder scales the side. At the top there's another DTT panel antenna and an FM array.

This is the original tower, which carries the VHF antenna for radio and a backup UHF antenna for Freeview.

Also visible are an abundance of re-broadcast receiver antennas. Until DSO in 2012, TV arrived at Brougher Mountain off-air from Divis, via a remote receive site at Gortin Forest:

Map showing Brougher Mountain in relation to a few other nearby transmitter sites.

Just above it are two vertical trough antennas, well spaced apart. These would have originally received TV from Strabane. Next to the top one are two horizontal trough antennas - it seems these may have received a "last resort" feed directly from Divis. Nowadays Freeview arrives via fibre, and backup is via satellite - so these antennas are almost certainly no longer in service.

You may also be able to spot two large log-periodic antennas - these receive BBC Radio from Divis. Brougher has never has a direct FM feed of it's own, and relies on re-broadcast.

The DTT antenna looks like stacks of white plastic squares, four around the pole and four tall. The FM array looks like lots of metal elements arranged in a cross, with a metal mesh reflecter behind each.
Close up view of the FM, DAB (I assume?) and DTT reserve antennas on mast A. Also note the microwave dish pointing vaguely in the direction of Belfast. There has been some speculation as to it's purpose. As best I can tell it is unrelated to TV or Radio.

Again, the DTT aerial looks like white plastic sqaures, four around and eight tall. A small pole sticks out horizontally from the top carrying an anemometer.
Close up view of the main DTT antenna on Mast B. I think that's an anemometer beside it but it's hard to tell.

View from the peak. This consists of green fields with distant houses, giving way to mountains (with yet another wind farm) and a perfect blue sky. Some white clouds are beginning to appear on the horizon.
And finally... There's a not-half-bad view from Brougher. It tends to feature heavily on my social media.

If you have info about any of these masts - please get in touch, even if (especially if) it's not stuff that can be shared on the web. I'd love to hear more.