Transmitter – sYnc

Already cold and pissed off watching seagulls and early morning dog walkers I waited for Winch and the rest of the world to wake up before meeting upwithNewage, Fluffy and Godzilla for a look inanR1 ROTOR Bunker.Portland CEWR1 ROTOR wasbuilt in 1951 and operational by 1953 and was a single story operation block accessed by an unusual guardhouse. In later years the site was taken over by the USAF who added a microwave relay station (to form part ofTroposcotter relay). In 1969 the underground bunker was badly damaged by fire and in 2001 the MoD stripped out the lift and (for some unknown reason) all the wooden flooring prior to the site going to sale by auction.As a result of the MoD ‘work’ and the fire this ROTOR bunker is in a very trashed state and as a result not a particularly inspiring place to explore. These days its in poor state suffering from serious damp problems and the Kelvin Hughes Projector room is flooded virtually to the top.

I didn’t bother getting very many pictures as my enthusiasm was running low and the shots I got are quite lame if I’m honest:

After leaving the R1 we dragged our tired asses up to Ridgeway Hill 3 Group AAOR stopping to cram copious amounts of food, Red Bull and Coffee before entering.

The AAOR looks fantastic from the outside, a nice two story blockhouse, semi-sunken in places and in great condition. Inside too its in excellent condition with lots of original features from both its RAF and Royal Navy days BUT sadly 95% of it cannot be seen due to thousands of boxes of cheap chinese toys (modern day use is a ‘warehouse’).

I’ll be honest, I’m not good when I’ve been awake for 30 hours so lets just say I didn’t stay long and the camera didn’t even come out of my bag so I sat outside sucking on caffeine waiting for Winch.

The day then started to get more interesting with Newage trying to tempt me with another juicy underground site that had potential to be better than all the previous locations (all I really wanted though was more food and loads of sleep). Seeing as we were in the area, everyone else was ganging up on me and the ExploreMobile still had good fuel stocks what was the harm in visiting one more place?

To be continued…

This has to be the cleanest explore I’ve ever done and one that’s been on my list for a very long while.

In fact it was so clean that I showed up in a black suit, black shiny FBI shoes and was for all intents and purposes a bona fide business customer, in fact there’s no way you would get in here without the correct ‘credibility props’ and it certainly makes a change from wading around in cold, deep, stagnant water, human faeces or crawling around in deep, musty bunkers, hell I even got coffee and a name badge 🙂

Built between 1961 and 1964 and up until 1980 the tallest building in London weighing in at 189.0 metres (620.1 ft) makes it still a VERY neat place to visit. Another neat feature is the high speed lift which runs at 7 metres a second, getting you to the 34th Floor (Top of the Tower) in less than 30 seconds. To get that far you MUST have an invite, be on their security list, produce pukka Photo ID and go through airport type security, including walk through ‘Gatescan’ metal detectors, baggage X-Ray and Hand Held Weapons scanners……mind you none of these spotted my Polymer Koppo Stick, I’ve walked through airport security all over the world with this badboy, plus a few Crown Courts ;-p

Photography up there is a witch though as the outer section of the room is rotating relatively fast, sunlight is coming through from all angles and reflections from other panes of glass in the structure are damned hard to avoid (in fact I’ve binned 20 shots already)

Enjoy…

First glimpse from Tottenham Court Road