Full Freeview on the Sandy Heath (Central Bedfordshire, England) transmitter
 | Google Streetview |  | Google map |  | Bing map |  | Google Earth |  | 52.130,-0.242 or 52°7'47"N 0°14'33"W |  | SG19 2NH |
The symbol shows the location of the Sandy Heath (Central Bedfordshire, England) transmitter which serves 920,000 homes. The bright green areas shown where the signal from this transmitter is strong, dark green areas are poorer signals. Those parts shown in yellow may have interference on the same frequency from other masts.
Are there any planned engineering works or unexpected transmitter faults on the Sandy Heath (Central Bedfordshire, England) mast?
Sandy Heath transmitter - Sandy Heath transmitter: Possible effect on TV reception week commencing 04/11/2024 Pixelation or flickering on some or all channels 
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Digital television services are broadcast on a multiplexes (or Mux) where many stations occupy a single broadcast frequency, as shown below.
64QAM 8K 3/4 27.1Mb/s DVB-T MPEG2
H/V: aerial position (horizontal or vertical)
Which Freeview channels does the Sandy Heath transmitter broadcast?
If you have any kind of Freeview fault, follow this Freeview reset procedure first.Digital television services are broadcast on a multiplexes (or Mux) where many stations occupy a single broadcast frequency, as shown below.
64QAM 8K 3/4 27.1Mb/s DVB-T MPEG2
H/V: aerial position (horizontal or vertical)
Which BBC and ITV regional news can I watch from the Sandy Heath transmitter?
BBC Look East (West) 1.0m homes 3.7%
from Cambridge CB4 0WZ, 29km east-northeast (65°)
to BBC Cambridge region - 4 masts.
70% of BBC East (East) and BBC East (West) is shared output
ITV Anglia News 1.0m homes 3.7%
from Norwich NR1 3JG, 119km east-northeast (60°)
to ITV Anglia (West) region - 5 masts.
All of lunch, weekend and 80% evening news is shared with Anglia (East)
How will the Sandy Heath (Central Bedfordshire, England) transmission frequencies change over time?
| 1965-80s | 1984-97 | 1997-98 | 1998-2011 | 2011-13 | 12 Feb 2020 | ||||
| VHF | A K T | K T | K T | W T | W T | ||||
| C6 | ITVwaves | ||||||||
| C21 | C4waves | C4waves | C4waves | +BBCB | BBCB | ||||
| C24 | ITVwaves | ITVwaves | ITVwaves | D3+4 | D3+4 | ||||
| C27 | BBC2waves | BBC2waves | BBC2waves | BBCA | BBCA | ||||
| C31 | BBC1waves | BBC1waves | BBC1waves | ||||||
| C32 | com7 | ||||||||
| C33 | SDN | ||||||||
| C34 | com8 | ||||||||
| C35 | _local | ||||||||
| C36 | ArqA | ||||||||
| C39 | C5waves | C5waves | |||||||
| C43 | _local | ||||||||
| C48 | ArqB | ArqB | |||||||
| C51tv_off | SDN | ||||||||
| C52tv_off | ArqA | ||||||||
| C55tv_off | com7tv_off | ||||||||
| C56tv_off | COM8tv_off |
tv_off Being removed from Freeview (for 5G use) after November 2020 / June 2022 - more
Table shows multiplexes names see this article;
green background for transmission frequencies
Notes: + and - denote 166kHz offset; aerial group are shown as A B C/D E K W T
waves denotes analogue; digital switchover was 30 Mar 11 and 13 Apr 11.
How do the old analogue and currrent digital signal levels compare?
| Analogue 1-4 | 1000kW | |
| BBCA, D3+4, BBCB | (-7.4dB) 180kW | |
| SDN, ARQA, ARQB | (-7.7dB) 170kW | |
| com7 | (-13dB) 49.6kW | |
| com8 | (-13.1dB) 49.1kW | |
| Mux 1*, Mux 2*, Mux A*, Mux B*, Mux C*, Mux D* | (-17dB) 20kW | |
| Analogue 5 | (-20dB) 10kW |
Which companies have run the Channel 3 services in the Sandy Heath transmitter area
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Sunday, 29 September 2013
M
Mark10:28 PM
We've had no BBC 1,2,ITV1 all day! Is this just rubbish reception stilk? NN7 northants.
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Monday, 30 September 2013
G
G9:07 AM
Mark: I am also in PE38 if it was not for the fact i can view via sky i would get rid of the TV, bbc spent the last week plugging the new Atlantis and low and behold that evening BBC1 signal is gone, the rest of the week its been ITV Ch4 that's been gone. As you say bring back analogue.
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R
Robin Meyers2:41 PM
We have had intermittent loss of signal on all channels since Friday 27th September. It is not only our problem but is affecting various apartment blocks on our site. (51.9506,-0.2748)
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R
Robin Hitchin2:46 PM
We have had problems with loss of signal intermittently affecting all channels since Friday 27th September.
It seems it is affecting many of the apartment blocks on our site so it's it is not within our apartment as first thought. Does anybody know the reason? (51.9506,-0.2748)
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B
Brian Greensides4:24 PM
High Brian Greensides here in March Cambs.
I have been having all the above reported problems, even checked if my loft aerial had moved. It was ok (set at 205 degrees to pick up Sandy) or if the 8 way distriburtion amp had failed, no it hadn't. We have a freeview Humax box which allows me to monitor the signal strength and quality. At the worst times of interference or in some cases no program received at all, the sig strength was 80-85% and quality ranged from 0 to 45%. Following much hair pulling a friend suggested that the problem was possibly Waltham or Tachleston breaking through and to try removing the loft amp. I followed this advice yesterday and although the signal strength has reduced to 65-70% the quality is still 100% and so far reception has been without problems.
Hope this may help others
Regards Brian
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J
jb389:29 PM
Brian Greensides: Although I appreciate the point you are making but its impossible for Waltham (@ 41 miles) or Tacolneston (@ 45 miles) to be the cause of the problem you were experiencing as well as the fact that they operate on totally different channels anyway, and as Sandy is located @ 31 miles away I would doubt if it would be able to overload your receivers input either, and so purely for a test you should backtrack on what you have done by reconnecting the booster / splitter followed by checking if the quality has taken a dive, if it does then although your booster "may" have developed a fault (doubtful though!) its much more likely that the input to your booster is being affected by some powerful form of local interference such as from a newly installed mobile phone mast etc or even an upgrade that has been carried out on an existing one.
That is, unless your problem was just being caused by remnants of the the high pressure induced interference that has been recently plaguing numerous viewers in various areas! but no matter what, those two transmitters can be eliminated from the equation.
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Tuesday, 1 October 2013
B
Bill10:04 AM
I have noticed that the signal returned yesterday morning, and that the problem was very wide spread. Why does it always say "no known problems" at the top of this page? Surely, if we were better informed, we would not be pulling our hair out trying to fix a problem that is not with our own equipment.
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B
Brian Greensides11:39 AM
jb38, Thank you for taking time to comment on my Mondays posting. I have not as yet reverted to my Amp/Distributor original setup. Also I have not heard of any local installations as you suggest (I did wonder about the new G4 800 mhz interference and even called their help line but they were adamant that as yet there are no masts in this area) I know you said the frequencies are different, but Sandy Heath Com 4/5/6 are close 714, 722, and 690 Mhz. I guess we need to consider harmonics and the fact the loft aerial is the wide band variety. I'm no expert but stranger things happen at sea (so I was lead to believe when I was in the navy)
Brian
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M
MikeG3:25 PM
Hi KMJ,Derby, sorry I did omit to say that it could also be adjacent transmitters that were causing the problem. Due to all the blame being placed on the poor old Sandy heath transmitter in so many previous posts I was just trying to shift the blame onto tropo and try to explain that the engineers at Sandy were not to blame. The signal strength seems to be good even at times of interference. I guess that's one of the problems with digital transmissions (less capture effect) and why the Air band will never be converted to digital; it just wouldn't work. Mike.
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L
LYNN STOKES7:55 PM
Unfortunately both myself and the neighbours i have spoken to are having dire reception problems with this so called better quality programme reception (i spent a fortune on replacing perfectly good tvs) . can you let us know why we are getting very bad distortion
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