Seahouses station has a continuous history of over 40 years providing precision positioning in the North Sea.

Seahouses in the 1960's
The photograph below was taken in 1965, and shows a typical east-coast Hi-Fix station with the standard design of antenna described on the antenna page.

All else about this station is also fairly typical incuding the equipment accomodation which couldn't have afforded much protection- either to the equipment, or to an unlucky engineer who had to visit the site in bad weather!

Photograph by kind permission of Ian Jackson, G3OHX.

Seahouses in the 1970's
Allan Papworth was working for Decca in the 1970's and took this picture of the Seahouses station in 1971. The caravan apparently was considered an eyesore by the Golf Club (I wonder why?!), who consequently wanted Decca off the site. At this time, the station was the northern slave of the North Tyne chain, with the master station at Hartlepool and the southern slave at Whitby.

Photograph by kind permission of Allan Papworth, G3WUW.

Seahouses in the 1980's and 90's
Some time around 1982, the station was converted to Hyperfix. At this time, the mast was replaced by a guyed lattice tower. The wooden 'garden shed' hut was also most probably provided about this time.

Seahouses in 2006
Following the demise of the East Coast Hyperfix chains in the mid 1990's, Seahouses was converted to a Deltafix station by the addition of a GPS receiver and a modification to its transmitter to allow transmission of the phase-shift keyed DGPS signal. It still radiates this signal which sounds like a 2-second on, 2-second off data burst alternately on around 2830 kHz and 1900 kHz. The signal is easily audible throughout most of the UK.

The photographs below were all taken just before sunset. In this part of Britain there is a unique quality of light at this time of day that makes the beautiful coastal scenery look even more spectacular.

Photograph: Alan Cordwell G0NFY.

The following photographs show bits of detail:

Clockwise from top left:

• Signery on the hut door dates from the Hyperfix days.
• Base of mast showing feed point. You can just see, nestling in the grass, the rain bell covering the insulator, and just to the left, the static discharge balls.
• The GPS antenna near the corner of the compound.
• The hut has seen better days. The board nailed onto it above the GPS cable entry appears to say 'WASHING' in very faded paint: I'm intrigued to know where this came from!

About Seahouses
The station is located at Seahouses in Northumberland, between Alnwick and Bamburgh on some of the most scenic coastline in Britain. The station is situated on a headland between the lake known locally as 'Logan's Loch' to the north, and the 10th hole green of Seahouses Golf Club to the south. It is a local landmark, easily visble from the B1340 Seahouses to Beadnell road.

Image produced from the Ordnance Survey Get-a-map service.
Image reproduced with kind permission of Ordnance Survey
and Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland.

Seahouses: The future
Fugro, who operate the Deltafix chain in support of their hydrographic and surveying operations, will likely keep the system operating for the foreseeable future as it provides them with an in-house facility for precision positioning. So it looks as though the station will remain here for a while yet. I wonder if it can make 50 years?