Bill Hume, who was an undergraduate at the University of Edinburgh
from 1960 to 1964, associates the masts with Dr L M Muggleton, on the
Electrical staff of the Engineering Department. Bill says that he seems to remember it being
mentioned that the angle of the slope of the hill complemented the vertical
aerial. He was not close to the aerial
at any time and he is unable to supply any further description of it.
(Bill replied to an appeal for information placed in RadCom, the members' magazine of the Radio Society of Great Britain)
(Bill replied to an appeal for information placed in RadCom, the members' magazine of the Radio Society of Great Britain)
Further enquiry reveals that Dr Muggleton was noted for his
research into radio wave propagation via the ionosphere. He held his position at Edinburgh from 1961 to 1973. 1 He also provided technical advice to the
evangelical broadcasting organisation Trans World Radio, who established a
short-wave transmitting facility at Monte Carlo
in Monaco
in 1960. 2, 3 An abstract of one of Dr
Muggleton’s research papers published in 1966 refers to an investigation of the
Monte Carlo-Edinburgh ionospheric path. 4
Dr Muggleton was born in South Africa, and in an earlier PhD thesis
submitted to the University of Cape Town he mentions his observations on radio
reception at a site in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe)
of short wave transmissions beamed by the BBC to Africa.
5 Dr Muggleton’s connection with South Africa might explain the origin of the story
about the use of the Boghall site to receive signals from South Africa.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Miles_Muggleton
4. http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/5247616/5247616/
5. https://open.uct.ac.za/handle/11427/22296?show=full (select view/open to download file)
