All posts by Tony May
Below are all of Tony May's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
OK, at the moment there is "No Signal" on channel 40 from Bluebell Hill, is this a fault or has it been discontinued.
Is there anywhere else where I can find out about transmitter faults?
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Chris.SE
Thanks for the websites, I had a look & they say there are no faults.
I tried a manual re-tune for channel 40 on the Toshiba, it said the signal strength was good but the quality was poor, I selected it to scan but it found no channels. I then tried a manual scan on an LG & that said there was no signal for channel 40, so I am at a loss when everything else is fine.
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Chris.SE
Well, I phoned the helpline & we are to get a visit from an engineer & a free aerial upgrade after his visit. The helpful young lady said that, I'm not quite sure what mind you, something changed in mid October that's affected us. I can't recall anything changing in October, I keep a record of when I have performed re-tunes & the last one I did was in June this year.
i will post again with anything further
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Chris.SE
Further to your questions, my neighbour is not affected. In 2013 I had the aerial refitted on the same chimney as the holding ties or wire straps had become loose. At the same time they fitted a new masthead power supply, a PSF1200 12V 100mA sort. The masthead amplifier, a UXFR2-20 was fitted in the loft. this had one aerial lead going to the front of the house & another lead going to the rear. The aerial lead from the amp to the aerial had an Optima OBF3453 UHF Band-Pass Filter Ch34-53 574-734MHz inline in it. The fitter said this was to limit the interference from Crystal Palace which was only a few degrees off of the line to Bluebell Hill. From 2013 we have not had any problems, re-tuning whenever necessary, the last time was in June 2019.
I tried connecting the aerial lead direct from the Toshiba to the aerial socket, this resulted in lower signal strengths & lower quality, the screen was pixallating on all channels except BBC. At this time I tried a manual scan of C40, surprisingly it did find Quest but it was unwatchable.
With more fiddling about & everything connected again I tried another manual scan on C40, it was showing the signal strength bar at 3/4 across & the signal quality was poor, then as I looked at it, the strength bar went fully across & the quality went from poor to good But before I could select scan they returned to where they were.
On the LG tv a manual scan on C40 returns a "No Signal" message, I have not tried to do that with the Panasonic DVD HDD.
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Chris.SE
A bit more info for you, we have wide band aerial & we are in a bit of a dip. I have previously looked at a terrain map & we do just about have a line of sight to the top of the mast at Bluebell Hill.
For some reason whenever I enter our postcode into the reception checker for freeview they return our nearest Tx as being Dover, which is just plain daft. I know we can get signals from Crystal Palace as we did previously. When Bluebell Hill was upgraded to 20,000W & HD came in everybody's aerial around here points at Bluebell Hill.
I think we have an intermittent fault on the lead from the aerial to the amp, that's my guess, why only C40 & not the others beats me.
I looked at a manual tune on the Panasonic for C40. Signal Strength was 10, the max. Signal Quality was poor & coloured red, about 3 on the scale.
Here's hoping for fine weather on Monday PM, the aerial man cometh!
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Chris.SE
I switched on the TV at 5:50 last night, Friday, went to the guide selected 66 & up came Judge Judy, quickly went into the set-up menu for manual tune for C40 & the strength bar was at max & the quality was good, selected scan & all the missing channels came back. What is going on?
Trouble is I have the aerial bods coming on Monday from the freeview helpline & now everything is OK.
I'm not sure my neighbour gave me the correct info when I asked him had any channels missing, I did not actually see what he beamed up to check. He has Sky so I might have got a bum steer from him. The other houses along here have dishes.
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Chris.SE
I called the helpline to cancel the appointment before I read your comments. I have not had any problems since it came back to full strength.
I have a question, if Bluebell Hill is just a transmitter, where does it get it's signal from? And in what form, OTA, microwave or fibre optic cable?
Thanks
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Wednesday 11 December 2019 10:59AM
Drama on channel 20 has also gone from the channel list.
Drama & Quest were on the SDN & com4 group, I can get Quest HD but not on my non HD tv's.
I've tried a manual retune on C40 & the list say's Drama is there but the list lies, it does not appear in the guide.
What's going on?