Did the BBC 2 Test Card ever have the 1986 "TWO" ident?

Wasn't there a similar arrangement for Sutton Coldfield to be able to signal Oxford to switch from RBL of SC to it's RBS source so that Sutton could then take Oxford as it's RBS? I think that was done with inaudible tones rather than VBI.

Are we talking ITV or BBC here? LWT never pulled out any U-links feeding transmitter circuits - why would they as they weren’t interested in anything the transmitter did once they closed down for the night? I can only think of one source of a PM5544 within the building and it was not generally available in the transmission area. But maybe before my time?

You're not alone, I thought something very similar. It didn't scare me but I fell for the same illusion.

This and my u link pulling is BBC as it owned it’s distribution..
Under normal conditions Oxford Was fed by microwave from wipsnade which took CP .... under “all uk RBS “. Sutton Coldfield RBS from Oxford...
And it may be that Oxford if it had lost the microwave would RBS from HAnnington ..
But that had to change itself round to RBS feed from CP rather than RBL Rowridge ... so that Hannington was Rowridges RBS source ... that was a commonly known situation...

Itv if course had it easy as the only link required to broadcast
was from The contractor to the IBA transmitter site ..
..and that was the IBAs problem I think !

I remember being phoned in the office by Plymouth saying that they had been putting out pulse and bar on BBC2 as that is what was in the incoming feed from BT .... they had phoned Bristol and CAR who had no advice !!!
I just said pull the output U links ..that took all SW transmitters RBS until some one could sort it all out .....
so I phoned the Duty Engineer to tell him a)what seemed to have occurred and would he tell transmitters etc and EID .
b) what I told PY to do and c) I would walk down the road to CAR to help them out ..but a BS-PY reverse contribution circuit seemed a good idea and opt out in PY (or over plug at the BT bays )
...which had been done by the time I got there !

Well, somewhere between the output of the ITV contractor, and the input of their primary transmitter the video signal had to be removed. Perhaps it was a co-ax relay at the tx site, either remote controlled by the IBA from one of their control rooms, or on a time switch, or was that bit BT's task somewhere in their domain ?

Whatever, ITV was the same as BBC and C4, the syncs vanished and 2-3 mins later off went the tx carrier.

From memory the local IBA control room would ring up late evening and ask what time we were planning to be off air and set a time clock accordingly. (We had been talking to them throughout the evening to agree quality control gradings on locally sourced programmes too). I can 100% assure you come close down for the evening the tx staff had their coats on and weren’t hanging around to pull u-links, home was a long way away.

I suppose the question to be asked is were the IBA local colour control rooms manned until the end of local tx? I do not remember after all this time, but may be able to ask around in the next few days.

I would be truly shocked if BT got involved at all.

Come to think of it, the IBA would like to have known when the closedown was going to be each night, in order to inhibit the automatic 'blue screen of death' caption that would pop up if syncs were lost during programme hours.

Perhaps that was the moment they pushed the button that inhibited that device, set the shut down timer going, and they grabbed their coats too !?

An interesting BBC test transmission courtesy of TV Ark

https://www.tvark.org/?page=media&mediaid=131437

Weird to hear talking over a testcard.

Spooky as hell too. Wonder what that was about? The caption says something about stereo but there no mention of that in the thing itself - just picture and sound quality.

As it was just in Crystal Palace and on reduced power presumably they were doing things to the RF side of things, possibly adding extra sub-carriers or audio channels for stereo, hence the mention of audio cross-talk?

Most likely. Any indication what year this was? Before the BBC pressed ahead with NICAM, they did asses the analogue Zweikanalton system. Could have been tests for that?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zweikanalton

13th March 1981, apparently