Greetings from Eaglescliffe.
Having lived up here for thirty years, being inside the circuit, and seen a few changes to traffic over the years, I'd offer the following (amateur) observations:-
1/ Visual self-positioning to land is far less common, so traffic is far higher when passing Bilsdale Transmitter. It often goes out to eight mile final for no apparent reason apart from, I guess, SOPs and whatever the box of tricks on the flight deck remcommends. The days of tight visual turns to final seem to have gone. When this was more common, I'd guess that the approach controller would take the possibility of a visual approach into account when vectoring and descending the traffic, which would present a potential conflict with the mast.
2/ For many years, the lights on the mast were quite poor, surprising considering the amount of military traffic in the area that would have been at a height that would bring it into potential conflict. They are now quite bright.
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Last edited by Midland 331; 2nd Jan 2013 at 10:38.