All posts by Chris.SE
Below are all of Chris.SE's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
Mr scott:
I can't find any reported faults with the Beacon Hill transmitter. I replied to another post last night about reception from Stockland Hill.
""There's also some pockets of moderate to strong Tropospheric Ducting around at present which may not be helping matters resulting in interference from other transmitters."
In general this was probably affecting quite a few areas around parts of Devon. The symptoms you are reporting would fit this scenario. Unfortunately some sets prompt a retune when they lose signal and generally it's NOT a good idea to retune in such circumstances as most of the time it just loses the correctly tuned channels or ends up picking up another transmitter (the wrong region or foreign) and you have to repeat the retune when conditions change.
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Lorraine Hillier:
I can't find any reports of problems with the Henley relay transmitter (but things may be slower in the current situation).
There is some "Tropospheric Ducting" around at present, see Effect of tropospheric ducting on Freeview | Help receiving TV and radio which may affect some parts of the country from time to time, this could be causing interference from more distant transmitters and might be the cause of your intermittent loss of signal if you aren't in a particularly good reception location. We'd need a full postcode to see what the Freeview Detailed Coverage Checker is giving for your predicted reception.
It's NOT a good idea to retune in such circumstances as most of the time it just loses the correctly tuned channels or ends up picking up another transmitter (the wrong region or foreign) and you have to repeat the retune when conditions change.
Other than that you could check for any loose connections at you aerial socket, coax plugs, fly leads etc. Always worth checking that your aerial appears intact and is pointing in the right direction.
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David Warner:
My first reaction reading your post was "a 20-element yagi 3 miles from CP!!" - you probably have too much signal, then you mentioned the trees and I thought hmm, how reliable was it before they came into leaf? Even then, who owns them? Only the owners would be able to consider topping/felling with the appropriate permissions. Even with a loft aerial, unless you are going through loads of party walls, water tanks, solar panels and god knows what else, you might still have too much signal. Except, if you are then splitting the signal with lots of passive splitters to many sets which will reduce the signal! Ah, but what you don't mention here (discovered from a previous post) is the railway viaduct.
Yes, I see the problem.
Probably a good idea to mention a few other factors. There has been some tropospheric propagation around (see https://www.bbc.co.uk/rec…iew) which was quite strong briefly but that should have now cleared this morning.
Crystal Palace did have some Planned Engineering recently, whilst the transmitter isn't currently listed there could still be some work continuing as I've seen several reports elsewhere about issues when work on other transmitters was supposedly completed but appeared not to be, so I'm not convinced the list is accurate!
Other than that, there've been no major changes at CP since March 2018 when COMs 7&8 moved to C55 & C56 (maybe with a power change) and the Local mux moved to C35 with a power increase to 34kW.
Various documents (Including this site and OFCOM) are not consistent with the current Freeview/DUK Detailed Coverage Checker. Here, the site owner has not had time to keep up with all the 700MHz clearance changes and some errors on various pages, as well as a multitude of programme LCN/mux changes. Some OFCOM documents don't appear to have been updated with some changes. I'm assuming the COMs 7&8 power increased to 84 & 81kW respectively when they moved to C55&C56, that change isn't clearly documented in DUK's clearance documents. There was a change to COM8 FEC to 1/2 on Feb.10th this year (that was nation wide).
The Local mux transmission mode also means the signal coverage is far greater with lower power (but it is much smaller bandwidth) also UHF transmissions in Group A tend to propagate much better than those at the top of the UHF band.
I don't know if you've kept any of your previous aerials, but I think you'll be into a situation of a bit of experimentation if things haven't "settled down" by next week. I'm still thinking there is a chance of too much signal, also that maybe an aerial with a flatter response (log periodic) maybe better, but then thinking about propagation aspects maybe the yagi with more gain at the top end! Depending on whether you are splitting your signal and by how much, it's probably worth having one of these Coax TV Aerial Attenuator Adjustable Variable Between 0-20 dB Reduces signal | eBay (eBay item number: 310039226920) so you can experiment, but if you are splitting the signals with a "booster" if it has a variable gain control you can turn that down. Don't forget too much signal will desensitise your tuner front end, when looking at your TV's tuning section it may say you have 100% signal but maybe not 100% quality, but equally could falsely show less than 100% signal as well as less than 100% quality, or even random figures that could be variable (even with no trains!).
Position of loft aerials can be critical, especially if you have water tanks, metal objects, old aerials etc nearby!
The bearing to CP hasn't changed, it's still 152 degrees (~SSE) and the DUK/Freeview Detailed Coverage Checker got moved to different cyberspace - not too cleverly - you had to use the boxes on Freeview | All your favourite TV shows, all in one place and all for free & scroll down and selected Detailed view, but they've recently added boxes on Freeview | All your favourite TV shows, all in one place and all for free corporate/platform-management which goes straight to Detailed View.
Hope that all helps, post back if you need more ideas, comment, etc.
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Tony D:
Quest is on the SDN multiplex at LCN12 on Freeview. Maybe your set didn't correctly store the channels after your retune. Try the following - unplug the aerial, then carry out a full automatic retune which should clear all previous tuning as no channels will be found. Switch the set off for 10 minutes. Plug the aerial back in, switch on and repeat the full retune and hopefully all channels will be correctly restored.
Don't carry this out if any multiplexes you normally receive ok are pixellating or have no signal as your transmitter might be having planned engineering. Wait until the signals are normal.
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Robert:
Tony Hall is deluded anyway! But the article gives the impression they are referring to International only being subscription but why don't they do that with all their UK channels, after all we occasionally see comments from people abroad who want to watch/stream and they can't.
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Paul:
There's no subscription for Freesat, whereas you've a monthly payment for Cable. If your TV has a built in Satellite tuner all you would need would be the Dish, LNB & Coax for Freesat. However, if you provide a full postcode we can look at the Freeview Detailed Coverage Checker predicted reception at your location. I' m not surprised you've gone through retunes with Freeview Help, it seems that's about all they can do!
Bilsdale was on Planned Engineering recently with "Possible weak signal", there may still be ongoing work that's not listed, the accuracy of the lists has been brought into question of late!
I assume you've checked your aerial still seems intact and is pointing the correct way, also worth checking your coax plugs and connections from aerial socket and any interconnecting flyleads etc. for corrosion, bad connections and so on. Keep any HDMI leads away from aerial leads.
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Andy:
Hi, your mother should be able to receive all the standard 6 multiplexes if her aerial is pointing at the Limavady transmitter. Talking Pictures is on the ArqB multiplex see Channel listings | Freeview
The aerial should be pointing at bearing 71 degrees that's ~ENE with the rods horizontal. Reception should be good/excellent.
If the aerial is pointing at the Londonderry relay due W (bearing 270 degrees) with rods vertical, it only transmits the 3 PSB mutliplexes BBCA, D3&4, BBCB HD.
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Anthony Graham:
It is certainly not a linear channel available on Freeview, see Channel listings | Freeview
AFAIK it's a subscription service that's available by streaming but only in the US.
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Thursday 21 May 2020 3:05PM
Anne West:
I replied to a post last night on the Stockland Hill page (DAB page but should have been Freeview).
"it's obvious you mean the Freeview transmitter.
It's possible that there's some engineering work taking place as the BBC reported a fault yesterday - From 10:35pm to 10:53pm on 19th May 2020 BBC A Reduced quality due to a fault &
From 10:35pm to 10:53pm on 19th May 2020 BBC B HD Reduced quality due to a fault.
Whatever work may be taking place it might affect any of the multiplexes and may well be the cause of what you are seeing. How it might affect your reception of a given multiplex will depend on your precise location - we'd need a full postcode to look at the Freeview Detailed Coverage checker to see predicted reception. "
Additionally I added "There's also some pockets of moderate to strong Tropospheric Ducting around at present which may not be helping matters resulting in interference from other transmitters."
Quote >> I live in Colyford but a lot of people on the Heart of Colyton were complaining about it. They stated they were getting instruction to retune. I did not have that.
Where were those instructions coming from? Their TV set? - unfortunately some sets prompt that when they lose signal and generally it's NOT a good idea to retune in such circumstances as most of the time it just loses the correctly tuned channels or ends up picking up another transmitter (the wrong region or foreign) and you have to repeat the retune when conditions change.
As far as COMs7&8 with extra HD and other channels is concerned, Stockland Hill is never going to have those multiplexes. They have been closed at some other transmitter for technical and financial reasons when the 700MHz Clearance took place, many because they are temporary multiplexes and were initially provisioned using redundant equipment from pre-DSO but that was not capable of moving to the temporary allocated UHF channels 55&56 and operating as Single |Frequency Networks.
It's anticipated that at some future date Arqiva will convert one (and more eventually) of their COM multiplexes to HD T2 possibly starting with COM6 (speculation) which will increase capacity and the ability to add HD channels.