Talk:Southern Television 'Vrillon' Incident/@comment-26560697-20150701162833

Okay, so this actually happened. You can find scans of newspaper articles that were published at the time talking about the incident. It's obviously a hoax, but it's interesting to consider the who, how and why. It's been argued that this could have been pulled off by a bored technician who just did it to entertain themselves, or they felt the message needed to be conveyed.

The Hannington Transmitter (the transmitter that relayed the broadcast that was interrupted here) had quite a weak signal compared to others in the area (including its feeder transmitter on the Isle of Wight), and overriding the signal wouldn't have been all that difficult if you had the correct equipment.

I have been to the Hannington Transmitter; there's a small technical room at the base of the transmitter. I'm assuming the override would have taken place either from inside there or from a nearby parked van with the equipment inside.