Freeview Light on the Carhampton (Somerset, England) transmitter
 | Google map |  | Bing map |  | Google Earth |  | 51.174,-3.409 or 51°10'27"N 3°24'32"W |  | TA24 6UZ |
The symbol shows the location of the Carhampton (Somerset, England) transmitter which serves 700 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.
This transmitter has no current reported problems
The BBC and Digital UK report there are no faults or engineering work on the Carhampton (Somerset, England) transmitter._______
Digital television services are broadcast on a multiplexes (or Mux) where many stations occupy a single broadcast frequency, as shown below.
H/V: aerial position (horizontal or vertical)
The Carhampton (Somerset, England) mast is a public service broadcasting (PSB) transmitter, it does not provide these commercial (COM) channels: U&Yesterday, 4seven, 5Action, 5STAR, 5USA, Al Jazeera Eng, Al Jazeera English, Blaze, Blaze +1, Challenge, Channel 5 +1, DMAX, E4 Extra, YAAAS!, Film4 +1, Food Network, FRANCE 24 (in English), GREAT! action, GREAT! christmas, GREAT! movies, GREAT! romance mix, HGTV, HobbyMaker, ITV2 +1, ITV3 +1, ITV4 +1, ITVBe +1, Legend, PBS America, Quest +1, Quest Red, Really, Sky Mix, Sky News, Talking Pictures TV, That's 90s, That's TV 2, Together TV, TRUE CRIME, TRUE CRIME XTRA, U&Dave, U&Dave ja vu, U&Drama +1, U&W.
If you want to watch these channels, your aerial must point to one of the 80 Full service Freeview transmitters. For more information see the will there ever be more services on the Freeview Light transmitters? page.
Which Freeview channels does the Carhampton 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.
| Mux | H/V | Frequency | Height | Mode | Watts |
| PSB1 BBCA | V max | C24 (498.0MHz) | 85m | DTG- | 20W |
 1 BBC One (SD) West, 2 BBC Two England, 9 BBC Four, 23 BBC Three, 201 CBBC, 202 CBeebies, 231 BBC News, 232 BBC Parliament, plus 17 others | |||||
| PSB2 D3+4 | V max | C27 (522.0MHz) | 85m | DTG- | 20W |
 3 ITV 1 (SD) (West), 4 Channel 4 (SD) South ads, 5 Channel 5, 6 ITV 2, 10 ITV3, 13 E4, 14 Film4, 15 Channel 4 +1 South ads, 18 More4, 26 ITV4, 28 ITVBe, 30 E4 +1, 35 ITV1 +1 (West), 71 That’s 60s, | |||||
| PSB3 BBCB | V max | C21+ (474.2MHz) | 85m | DTG- | 20W |
 46 5SELECT, 101 BBC One HD West, 102 BBC Two HD England, 103 ITV 1 HD (ITV Meridian Southampton), 104 Channel 4 HD South ads, 105 Channel 5 HD, 106 BBC Four HD, 107 BBC Three HD, 204 CBBC HD, 205 CBeebies HD, plus 1 others | |||||
Are you trying to watch these 44 Freeview channels?
The Carhampton (Somerset, England) mast is a public service broadcasting (PSB) transmitter, it does not provide these commercial (COM) channels: U&Yesterday, 4seven, 5Action, 5STAR, 5USA, Al Jazeera Eng, Al Jazeera English, Blaze, Blaze +1, Challenge, Channel 5 +1, DMAX, E4 Extra, YAAAS!, Film4 +1, Food Network, FRANCE 24 (in English), GREAT! action, GREAT! christmas, GREAT! movies, GREAT! romance mix, HGTV, HobbyMaker, ITV2 +1, ITV3 +1, ITV4 +1, ITVBe +1, Legend, PBS America, Quest +1, Quest Red, Really, Sky Mix, Sky News, Talking Pictures TV, That's 90s, That's TV 2, Together TV, TRUE CRIME, TRUE CRIME XTRA, U&Dave, U&Dave ja vu, U&Drama +1, U&W.
If you want to watch these channels, your aerial must point to one of the 80 Full service Freeview transmitters. For more information see the will there ever be more services on the Freeview Light transmitters? page.
Which BBC and ITV regional news can I watch from the Carhampton transmitter?
BBC Points West 0.9m homes 3.4%
from Bristol BS8 2LR, 64km east-northeast (61°)
to BBC West region - 60 masts.
ITV West Country News (East) 0.9m homes 3.4%
from Bristol BS4 3HG, 66km east-northeast (64°)
to ITV West region - 61 masts.
All of lunch, weekend and 50% evening news is shared with West Country (West)
How will the Carhampton (Somerset, England) transmission frequencies change over time?
| 1984-97 | 1997-98 | 1998-2010 | 2010-13 | 5 Jun 2019 | |||||
| A K T | A K T | A K T | A K T | A K T | |||||
| C21 | BBC1waves | BBC1waves | BBC1waves | +BBCB | BBCB | ||||
| C24 | ITVwaves | ITVwaves | ITVwaves | BBCA | BBCA | ||||
| C27 | BBC2waves | BBC2waves | BBC2waves | D3+4 | D3+4 | ||||
| C31 | C4waves | C4waves | C4waves |
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 24 Mar 10 and 7 Apr 10.
How do the old analogue and currrent digital signal levels compare?
| BBCA, D3+4, BBCB | 20W | |
| Analogue 1-4 | (-4dB) 8W |
Which companies have run the Channel 3 services in the Mendip transmitter area
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Wednesday, 31 July 2019
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Steve Hill5:43 PM
Norman D. Landing: No improvement at all. I spent Monday morning driving around the relay with an aerial, fine in all directions except a corridor to the East of the relay that takes in those postcodes. I went on the BBC's coverage checker and for those postcodes it said there were no channels available from the Carhampton relay and the best one to go for was Carmel. My customers don't want Welsh tv!
Regarding interference from Carmel, I don't think that's the case because the Porlock relay uses the same frequencies as Carhampton and is not affected at all by Carmel, even though it's stronger there. It's almost as though Carhampton's footprint has changed!
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Norman D. Landing6:20 PM
Steve Hill: Hmmm, that does seem very odd! I note that midway between the area and the relay there are some woods showing on google earth - could those have grown up and be blocking the signal? Anything been built in that direction recently?
Do you happen to have a spectrum analyser available that you could look for odd interferring signals with?
I wonder, are you able to use a portable set and drive to places between the affected area and the relay, to see if you can find a spot where the signal is usable?
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Chris.SE10:01 PM
Lee Maidens:
Could you be a little more specific please? Location/postcode, have you previously received the Carhampton relay and what sort of signal did you have? Put your postcode into Digital UK - Coverage checker to see what the predicted reception is.
Steve Hill:
I assume the antenna at Carhampton visually looks as though it should radiate eastwards - ie no missing aerials/panels? Also this isn't the first time I've heard/come across the BBC checker conflicting with the Digitaluk checker.
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Thursday, 1 August 2019
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Chris.SE12:34 AM
Steve Hill; & Norman D Landings:
Hmm this is definitely a mystery. The suggestion about the woods is worth looking at. I thought I would try and do a bit of research on the situation prior to the problems, and trying to locate the right kind of historic information was not easy.
Steve, did this start on Jul 17th?
I note that on the Digitaluk checker it notes a reception change on the 17th July, but I cannot find out by how much it changed! These events are usually due to other transmitters changing to the same UHF channels on that date. I listed some of the other transmitters using the same channels but none of these changed on the 17th, in fact they were all using those channels previously and the only change that most & Carhampton had was on the 5th June when the PSB3/BBCB (HD) mux had the channel offset removed.
BUT oops, I didn't mention & missed one very important tx that did move to the same UHF channels on the 17th and that's Kilvey Hill, also using vertical polarisation. And it has 2kw power, whilst that's not huge I reckoned just being the other side of the channel it could be enough to be an issue. When I look at it's predicted coverage map it does show coverage all over your area at Carhampton, Old Cleeve & West Quantoxhead albeit a poorer signal !! I'm thinking oh dear Arqiva & OFCOM have fouled up here!
Steve, from the postcodes you gave, the bearing for Kilvey Hill is not vastly different from Carhampton and i reckon it could be sufficiently within the beam angle of the antenna pointed at Carhampton!
Can you experiment and see if a) you can pick up Kilvey Hill by careful aerial pointing, and b) by angling the aerial further away from Kilvey HIll's bearing (ie. anticlockwise - more southerly) if you can then get Carhampton ok.
I'll be interested on your thoughts on all this.
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Friday, 2 August 2019
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Steve Hill5:22 PM
Minehead
Norman D. Landing: Yes I've driven round with an aerial and my meter, to the west of the relay I found no problems, even to the east all was well at postcode TA24 6HX yet 200 yards up the road I was getting an identical strength reading but no signal quality, this seemed to be the case right around to Bilbrook at TA24 6HD but then at Withycombe between Bilbrook and Carhampton the signal quality returned.
I was sitting on a bungalow roof looking at the relay, no more than two miles away, nothing in the way, no new buildings or large trees.
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Steve's: mapS's Freeview map terrainS's terrain plot wavesS's frequency data S's Freeview Detailed Coverage
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Steve Hill5:27 PM
Chris.SE: Kilvey Hill is an interesting thought, it's not strong enough to be useable in Carhampton though, I did look for it while I was doing my testing but could barely pick it up on my meter. I did try panning the aerial to the south and yes Carhampton did start to come in, I assumed it was a reflection off the hills but looks like I might have been wrong!
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Steve Hill5:40 PM
Lee Maidens: Whereabouts are you in Carhampton Lee?
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Saturday, 3 August 2019
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Chris.SE12:01 AM
Steve Hill:
We were reminded (by Michael) that reception of Carmel on the North Devon coast is significantly affected by the height of the tide in the Bristol channel. No doubt it will affect Kilvey Hill as well which, although low power, can easily be strong enough to cause interference problems.
Whether log periodic aerials pointing in a suitable direction might give the best chance of rejecting Kilvey Hill as they have no side lobes and better front to back ratio compared to a yagi.
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Norman D. Landing5:12 AM
This is an intruiging problem. Carhamptons transmit antenna system is a simple cardioid colinear array (pics on mb21) so a fault with the transmit antenna, while likely to cause a pattern change, would result in a noticable change in signal strength but not quality. The only things that can cause a quality loss to this extent on all three muxes are local interference, adjacent channel interference (these days often 4G) or as Chris SE has discovered - a strong co-channel interference source. Looking at the postcodes and the bearings from them to the relay, and to Kilvey Hill, it does look like that is the case here!
It looks like a somewhat imperfect level of spectrum planning! Plus, remarkably bad luck in that all three channels are co-channel with Kilvey Hill!
I suspect, as mentioned, the way to alleviate this is with some clever use of receive antenna pattern, bearing, and use of available shielding (positioning on side walls etc to try and block Kilvey)
one thing to note though - Kilvey is only part way through the 700MHz clearance process, at some point in the future that process will be completed. Ive no idea whether that will be a further frequency change or not
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