Power outage at BBC Wales

I remember seeing this live at the time and there was at least one sequence that went open air logo -> grey interference -> open air logo.Took about 5 - 10 seconds.I was surprised how unclean this all was, at the time.

I wonder if recordings don't show this as the loss seemed to lose sync so some recorders will stop recording on this (my DVD recorder I use to digitise VHS tapes stop and starts with lost sync on a vhs source, and its quick at it). I wonder if the recordings are a DVD digisted VHS.

Or else different parts of the country saw different things.

I always imagined u-link was moved back to put London back into circuit.

Which part of the country did you see that in?

Aberdeen

That throws my theory about it only being south of Birmingham/Manchester out then. Unless as you say it was physical replugging

It might well have been that Open Air was initially being routed, (perhaps by BT and/or the BBC themselves) in such a way that Manchester was the Net 1 hub, so yes manual re-patching required (all at the same time) and various points around the UK to reconfigure things back to normal.

The absence or otherwise if Ceefax data in the VBI would have possibly provided clues.

My memory of the morning was Crystal Palace was only carrying BBC 1 (and we had Hannington RBS'ing
it, as Rowridge was dead until about 8pm). I don't recall any BBC 2 that morning at all, but I'm not sure ?

I assumed they were just switching TV Centre, or another BBC facility (BH was involved in TV circuits then I think) back into mains power, hence the brief break

I recall BBC Two showing an apology caption (white text on blue background I think - very ITV) prior to 9am. Don’t know what happened later in the morning.

London Switching Centre in BH was very much involved with TV distribution and contribution at the time.
I know, as I was supposed to be training in there that day.
I tried to get in from North East Hampshire by bus at 06:30 that morning, with trees lying all over the roads, and those that weren't wobbling about alarmingly.
Eventually I did give up, and rang in to be told I was not needed, and did I know what had happened?
(I think the previous night's late shift which was just the supervisor had slept at BH to cover the morning.)

No I didn't. As ever the power had gone off at home, and the only battery radio had to be dug out, and it was an LW/MW one.
The local radio (Radio 210)'s MW transmitter was off air, so it was the national stations only.

BH did not loose all its power that night, although one of the two main feeders went off.
I obviously didn't see what went out on air, as I had no working telly.
Details of this event 32 years ago are sketchy in my mind, and I'm amazed at the memories of some on here!

Yes, there were parts of London that still had power after the Great Storm. Friends of my parents in West London still had power and wondered what had happened overnight. Where I live, which is pretty close to Crystal Palace in 87 had no power.

Quite possibly locally generated at Belfast. If CP had no BBC 2 I suspect Net 2 was dead

I seem to recall a blue caption on BBC1 on the clip of one of the regions opting out for the regional news before handing over to Nicholas Witchell in the Broom Cupboard.

The back up for Network TV back in 1987 was if TC CAR / Network was lost, then first was TC SCAR, the news hub.
If that was not available, it would be Lime Grove. If all of those were lost, and they were all physically close to each other then it would have been to hold network from BH with just pulse & bar test pattern until Pebble Mill could take over.
I thought that the central hub of TC did have some power - CAR and the network areas - but that was it.

How it was patched around after the storm I'm not sure. Possibly it was safer to opt the Network feeds to the lines from Birmingham while TC was being bought back up if they were switching back from a genny to incoming feeds.