Enniskillen MF Transmitting Station

On the outskirts of Enniskillen[1]Didn't see that coming, did you!

Not to be confused with Brougher Mountain

As of 2025, this site is home to:

In the past it also transmitted:

Wide view, showing the entire site. Towards the left, the long wire antenna for MW is visible - to the right, a freestanding tower carrying cellular antennas, and a colinear for DAB.

Enniskillen MF was built to supplement reception from Lisnagarvey. It's quite uncanny, you can receive Lisnagarvey almost until Enniskillen comes into view travelling along the Tempo Road (B80) - and then it sharply disappears into static.

As mentioned before, BBC radio is distributed by a special NICAM system - typically this is demultiplexed at a major FM transmitter, such as Divis, and audio for MW transmitters is sent from there via FM RBL, or short BT circuits.

A map, showing Enniskillen MF and it's links to various transmitters. It received feeds from Londonderry, and Brougher Mountain via RBS.

However, as you can glean from the map above - the nearest available NICAM demultiplexer was all the way up in Londonderry.

It's not entirely obvious to me why it was felt that re-broadcasting Brougher was not good enough. Perhaps it was felt that re-broadcasting a re-broadcast was not ideal (although on MW... would you notice?) - or perhaps there were plans for Londonderry to provide programming for Enniskillen. It is unlikely we will ever know for sure.

In any case, apparently the connection was provided by BT's MusicLine 2000, which provided three audio circuits down an E1. Given the site carried three programmes, that sounds perfect.

It does seem that re-broadcast was a backup option, however, and indeed you can see the antenna for this on the rear of the transmitter building.

A small antenna mast on the side of a building, carrying a UHF log-periodic, a VHF yagi-uda, and what appears to be a shrouded SHF yagi-uda.

Weirdly though, they are accompanied by what appears to be UHF log-periodic and some kind of shrouded SHF antenna. No idea what those could have been for. Taking a very rough bearing it seems to be pointing north. That's unhelpful. I really can't imagine Londonderry would have been visible from there.

I think it's worth noting that for a short while in the 2000s, the BBC Radio Ulster had an Enniskillen Opt - this was operated from a studio opposite the Clinton Centre in the town. However, this fed back to Belfast BH via ISDN, where it was switched into circuit as required - it never had a direct feed to either MF or FM transmitters (Brougher).

Sadly that opt has long gone - and I believe the studio has been abandoned.

Closer view of the freestanding cellular mast and it's colinear DAB antenna.

DAB was added in 2010 to try and fill-in a terrible dead-spot in the town from Brougher coverage. It helps a bit, but the area is still very spotty. You can see here they've added a VHF colinear antenna to the top of the cellular mast next door for this.

Small red-brick transmitter buildin, featuring three satellite dishes and a GPS timing antenna.

The transmitter building itself is a modest affair - you can see here there are a number of satellite dishes outside. I'm told the large white one provides the DAB feed, and the two smaller ones would have provided backups for national radio and Radio Ulster.

In fact, it's very possible that in the last few years the MusicLine & NICAM system has been abandoned completely, and those dishes provided both main and reserve feeds.

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.