Sender Donaueschingen

The Sender Donaueschingen stands on a plateau near Hüfingen in the Black Forest, 917 metres above sea level. It is a 125.5-metre-tall telecommunications tower built in 1975 and 1976 for radio and television signals. The tower’s design allows it to carry both old analogue broadcasts and modern digital services. A large cylindrical section at 50 metres houses the technical equipment for these transmissions. After the switch to digital television in 2007, the tower received a new fibreglass cylinder only 16.6 metres high instead of the former 33-metre antenna structure. The site once broadcast analogue PAL television channels for ZDF, ARD and SWR until 2007. Since then it has carried DVB-T2 HD signals on channels 37, 43 and 47. Digital radio in DAB+ format has been transmitted from the tower since 2015. The antenna for DAB+ sits around 69 metres up and uses a four-layer design with mixed polarisation. All digital services operate in a single-frequency network with other local transmitters. Visitors see a tall, slender concrete tower topped by a smaller fibreglass cylinder. The surrounding landscape is open farmland and distant wooded hills. There are no public viewing platforms or visitor facilities on the tower itself. The site remains an active technical installation, so access is restricted. From the base, the structure dominates the skyline against the upland horizon.