The Cleeve

The photograph below was sent in by Dennis Morgan of Greytree and shows The Cleeve, at the bottom of Cleeve Lane. This is a 'real photo' postcard. The field was part of Lower Cleeve Farm, probably farmed by the Griffin Brothers. Any Information on the lady in corn field at Lower Cleeve would be appreciated.

In a shed, in a garden, lived a hermit. Not a damp dirty shed, full of worms, spiders and the smell of turpentine but a clean and tidy shed, an Aladdin's Cave of science and technology. This hermit liked to experiment with the wonders of modern science and the universe. Mostly, his experiments would go wrong but then one day last century . . .

The two photographs below are not actually of Ross-on-Wye but more of a kind of achievement of my own, which was reported by Martin Morris in the Ross Gazette back in 1985. As many readers will already know, before I started Wyenot.com I was a keen radio amateur holding the call-sign G4RRT. (I still am in fact but just don't get the time to enjoy it.) I have also been very interested in the space programme, having followed it from the very beginning and travelling to California to watch the very first space shuttle land.

A big part of my amateur radio interest was sending and receiving both fast scan and slow scan television (SSTV) and this was done using 'home brew' equipment. Not plug-in computer cards, 'home brew' meaning soldering every component together and experimenting until, after many disasters, the device actually worked. Along with my friend, Mike Arnison (G4THC) in Cinderford, I was also interested in amateur radio via satellite - we spoke to one another briefly once (Ross-Cinderford-Ross) via a satellite passing over Central Africa, a radio path of many thousands of miles.

I could not believe my luck when, in 1985 NASA took up the Shuttle Amateur Radio Experiment (SAREX), sending astronaut and USA licensed Tony England (call-sign W0ORE) into space on the shuttle with SSTV transmitting equipment.

To cut a really long story short, from the above mentioned shed in my garden in Cawdor, Ross-on-Wye, I managed to receive SSTV pictures from Tony England on board the space shuttle Challenger, which sadly exploded on take off a mission or so later, killing all on board. The photographs below are screen shots from the event, which was no mean feat, steering the ten element crossed yagi beam aerial on my shed roof to track the shuttle as it travelled at an altitude 199 miles and varying distance of between 320 and 1,800 miles whilst orbiting the earth at five miles per second. Watching live broadcasts from space can be done all too easily nowadays by purchasing a satellite television dish and tuning into NASA TV but back in 1985 a direct communication without the aid of Jodrell Bank was quite an achievement.

The left photograph shows the robotic arm and payload bay of Challenger with the Earth below. Right is Tony England on board Challenger.