Spoke to Maw this afternoon.The "Big gun" was fired off from the general direction of whinhill during Air raids recounting one particular occasion when everyone in the area rushed to the railway tunnel at the strone(I presume near where the old upper Greenock station is situated) during an air raid.On this occasion someone(Romoured to be a german Spy )shouted train coming with the resultant effect of some fatalities due to some poor souls being trampled underfoot in the rush.Apparently the gun was firing at the incoming german Bombers.Will of course try to find out more abuot Millars farm.

It's a good idea to tick the Disable Smiles? box when posting locations. The posted location can then be cut and pasted.

I have added an experimental Map Sandbox page:

http://www.secretscotland.org.uk/index.php/Secrets/MapSandbox

It's nothing clever, but if you copy and paste the lines provided by the Find lat/lon/NGR page:

http://www.secretscotland.org.uk/index.php/User/MapLatLon

Then, when saved, it will not only provide a map centred on the point of interest...

But, below it you will find links to all the other online mapping services, and geograph, which will give any available pics of the area.

The default view is map, so you will have to hit the Satellite option to see the aerial view - which is not always available, so is not the default.

NOTE!

This only work for ONE location at a time. Adding multiples will just upset it.

You CAN add more markers though - that's the FIRST line only.

You can annotate them by adding a link option:

(:gma-point lat=55.8317582 lon=-5.0166321 link='Whinhill circle':)

This can be used to provide a common place to see a given location when being discussed in a thread such as this one.

I have quickly put some pictures of RAF Breckness and RAF Rosehearty online

BRECKNESS

ROSEHEARTY

MB

Thanks jmb.  However the Whinhill building is quite small, the main room is about 12ft by 6ft.

My apologies for the lack of co-ordinates and the use of smileys.Was purposefully being a bit vague as I was quoting the memories of a relly which can on occasions be innacurate for reasons I wont go into,and did not want to cause any confusion given Signal city,the batteries and the decoys in the area,nevertheless I have heard these stories pre-sesco and have no reason to doubt the general story.However I will be speaking to a former resident who farmed in the "Renfrewshire heights"  who is now living in Oxford and may well be able to pinpoint the location of Millars farm.Apologies once again jmb.

This is perhaps a bit of a red herring but on top of whinhill there is a radio mast now cellular of course which from memory did contain a number of concrete structures pre 1974.
At that time they were used to house the radio equipment and were very old at that time.I will post the co-ordinates in two shakes of a lambs tail.

The co-ordinates for the Whinhill mast site are...NS277749.

Quoted from The Fox

Thanks jmb.  However the Whinhill building is quite small, the main room is about 12ft by 6ft.

It was just to show that some block built buildings, that did not look very military, were used sometimes.

MB

Greenock - I can do you a close up pic of the masts - any takers?

jmb, no criticsm intended!

Quoted from The Fox

Greenock - I can do you a close up pic of the masts - any takers?

jmb, no criticsm intended!

Someone else took some convincing because they are not like most other radar buildings.

I think I have seen a similar one somewhere else but can't remember where at the moment.

MB

Re. The strange conical Antenna. A suggestion could be a direction finding set up along the lines of a Loop(As in Medium Wave type)although wound for HF as in Circa 2Mhz.these I know were useful for direction finding and would have looked conical.On a works visit to Norway a few years back I saw a few of these in front Gardens above Oslo presumably used by DXers or Hams but perhaps with wartime applications.

Afraid there will be a short delay in the 1930s pics, but the good news is they will arrive.

I thought I was losing my touch, until I did a quick web search on using images embedded in Word documents, and found that it was still an issue.

I left Word behind (for layout) years ago. It might be a great word processor, but as far as being a tool for composing documents that need things like photo/image layout control, it makes a great chocolate ashtray. Basically, after an image is embedded, you can't cut and past it elsewhere without problems that render it useless.

Fortunately, one of the options using old software to convert the images works fine, so I'll have another, hopefully successful, run at lifting the gun pics and getting online.

Whoever said this stuff was simple?

The 1931 Portkil-to-Cloch gun pics have now been added to the Coastal Battery Cloch Point page.

One of the handy things about these pics is that some of them include the men working on the move, so you get an excellent indication of the scale.

There's one more surprise addition to come later

Quoted from Apollo

The 1931 Portkil-to-Cloch gun pics have now been added to the oastal Battery Cloch Point page.

One of the handy things about these pics is that some of them include the men working on the move, so you get an excellent indication of the scale.

There's one more surprise addition to come later

They are probably some of the ones given to the RCAHMS by the RN, they were clearing out stuff at Faslane and found some boxes of old photographs.  Fortunately they asked the RCAHMS if they wanted them rather just throw in the skip.

Some are some nice ones of the Sutors batteries being built in WWI.

MB

Well, "ours" certainly didn't come from those sources

The fifth was taken at Coastal Battery Ardhallow

But shield only on this occasion.

Dunoon museum has just acquired a large brass padlock with crows foot and inscribed Ardhallow Fort.  It is assumed to have been for a magazine and was dug up on the beach at Toward some years ago.  How did it get there? Nobody knows.

Quoted from The Fox

Dunoon museum has just acquired a large brass padlock with crows foot and inscribed Ardhallow Fort.  It is assumed to have been for a magazine and was dug up on the beach at Toward some years ago.  How did it get there? Nobody knows.

Probably usual War Office method of disposal, makes you wonder what else is out there.

MB

I've just seen photos of the Windyhead Hill Gee station at Burifa Hill, and the unusually-shaped DF building survives there too.