Full Freeview on the Fenton (Stoke-on-Trent, England) transmitter

Brian Butterworth first published this on 1st May 2004 at 08:20 - UK Free TV

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53.003,-2.146 or 53°0'11"N 2°8'46"W

ST4 2NX

The symbol shows the location of the Fenton (Stoke-on-Trent, England) transmitter which serves 130,000 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 Fenton (Stoke-on-Trent, England) mast?

Fenton transmitter - Fenton transmitter: Possible effect on TV reception week commencing 04/12/2023 Pixelation or flickering on some or all channels

Choose from three options: ■ List by multiplex ■ List by channel number ■ List by channel name

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Which Freeview channels does the Fenton 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)	251m	DTG-	2,000W
	1 BBC One (SD) West Midlands, 2 BBC Two England, 9 BBC Four, 23 BBC Three, 201 CBBC, 202 CBeebies, 231 BBC News, 232 BBC Parliament, plus 19 others
PSB2 D3+4	V max	C27 (522.0MHz)	251m	DTG-	2,000W
	3 ITV 1 (SD) (Central (West micro region)), 4 Channel 4 (SD) Midlands ads, 5 Channel 5, 6 ITV 2, 10 ITV3, 13 E4, 14 Film4, 15 Channel 4 +1 Midlands ads, 18 More4, 26 ITV4, 28 ITVBe, 30 E4 +1, 35 ITV1 +1 (Central west),
PSB3 BBCB	V max	C21+ (474.2MHz)	251m	DTG-	2,000W
	46 5SELECT, 101 BBC One HD West Midlands, 102 BBC Two HD England, 103 ITV 1 HD (ITV Central West), 104 Channel 4 HD Midlands ads, 105 Channel 5 HD, 106 BBC Four HD, 107 BBC Three HD, 204 CBBC HD, 205 CBeebies HD, plus 1 others 66 TBN UK,
COM4 SDN	V -3dB	C25 (506.0MHz)	251m	DTG-8	1,000W
	20 Drama, 21 5USA, 29 ITV2 +1, 32 5STAR, 33 5Action, 38 Channel 5 +1, 41 Legend, 42 GREAT! action, 57 Dave ja vu, 58 ITVBe +1, 59 ITV3 +1, 64 Blaze, 67 TRUE CRIME, 68 TRUE CRIME XTRA, 78 TCC, 81 Blaze +1, 89 ITV4 +1, 91 WildEarth, 209 Ketchup TV, 210 Ketchup Too, 211 YAAAS!, 267 Al Jazeera English, plus 35 others
COM5 ArqA	V -3dB	C22+ (482.2MHz)	251m	DTG-8	1,000W
	Smithsonian Channel, 11 Sky Mix, 17 Really, 19 Dave, 31 E4 Extra, 36 Sky Arts, 40 Quest Red, 43 Food Network, 47 Film4 +1, 48 Challenge, 49 4seven, 60 Drama +1, 65 That's Christmas, 70 Quest +1, 74 Yesterday +1, 75 That's 90s, 233 Sky News, plus 11 others
COM6 ArqB	V -3dB	C28 (530.0MHz)	251m	DTG-8	1,000W
	Quest Red +1, Classic Hits, 12 Quest, 25 W, 27 Yesterday, 34 GREAT! movies, 39 DMAX, 44 HGTV, 52 GREAT! christmas, 56 That's TV (UK), 61 GREAT! movies extra, 63 GREAT! christmas mix, 71 That’s 60s, 73 HobbyMaker, 82 Talking Pictures TV, 83 Together TV, 84 PBS America, 235 Al Jazeera Eng, plus 20 others

DTG-8 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 Fenton transmitter?

BBC Midlands Today 2.9m homes 10.9%
from Birmingham B1 1RF, 61km south-southeast (164°)
to BBC West Midlands region - 66 masts.

ITV Central News 2.9m homes 10.9%
from Birmingham B1 2JT, 61km south-southeast (164°)
to ITV Central (West) region - 65 masts.
All of lunch, weekend and 80% evening news is shared with Central (East)

How will the Fenton (Stoke-on-Trent, England) transmission frequencies change over time?

	1984-97	1997-98	1998-2011	2011-13	7 Mar 2018
	A K T	A K T	A K T	A K T	W T
C21	C4_waves	C4_waves	C4_waves	+BBCB	BBCB
C22				+ArqA	ArqA
C24	ITV_waves	ITV_waves	ITV_waves	BBCA	BBCA
C25				SDN	SDN
C27	BBC2_waves	BBC2_waves	BBC2_waves	D3+4	D3+4
C28				ArqB	ArqB
C29				_local	_local
C31	BBC1_waves	BBC1_waves	BBC1_waves
C32					com7
C34					com8
C35		C5_waves	C5_waves
C55_{tv_off}					com7_{tv_off}
C56_{tv_off}					COM8_{tv_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 7 Sep 11 and 21 Sep 11.

How do the old analogue and currrent digital signal levels compare?

Analogue 1-5	10kW
BBCA, D3+4, BBCB	(-7dB) 2kW
SDN, ARQA, ARQB	(-10dB) 1000W
com7, com8	(-18.5dB) 140W
Mux 1, Mux 2, Mux A, Mux B	(-20dB) 100W
Mux C, Mux D	(-23dB) 50W

Local transmitter maps

Fenton Freeview Sutton Coldfield TV region BBC West Midlands Central (West micro region)

Which companies have run the Channel 3 services in the Sutton Coldfield transmitter area

Feb 1956-Jul 1968	Associated TeleVision†
Feb 1956-Jul 1968	Associated British Corporation◊
Jul 1968-Dec 1981	Associated TeleVision
Jan 1982-Feb 2004	Central Independent Television
Feb 2004-Dec 2014	ITV plc

Feb 1983-Dec 1992	TV-am•
Jan 1993-Sep 2010	GMTV•
Sep 2010-Dec 2014	ITV Daybreak•

• Breakfast ◊ Weekends ♦ Friday night and weekends † Weekdays only. Fenton was not an original Channel 3 VHF 405-line mast: the historical information shown is the details of the company responsible for the transmitter when it began transmitting Channel 3.

Is the transmitter output the same in all directions?

S

StevensOnln1

_{sentiment_very_satisfied}Platinum

11:27 PM

Chris.SE: Cellmapper (see link below) generates a crowd sourced map of mobile base stations (the individual networks each publish their own but don't show details such as the bands in use at each site) so whilst there is no guarantee as to the accuracy of the data, for areas which have been well mapped it is possible to get a fairly good idea of where the 4G/ base stations are and which frequency bands are in use (band 20/ and band 28/ are the ones to look out for when looking for possible sources of which may impact ).

Cellular Tower and Signal Map

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C

Chris.SE

_{sentiment_very_satisfied}Platinum

2:44 AM

StevensOnln1:

Hi, thanks for your post. I had come across cellmapper but not found it particularly intuitive to use. It also seems to suffer problems with cell locations on maps with some cells I'd looked at - similar to AM/FM locations on this site!
Any ideas why that might be?

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Chris.SE's 3,934 posts GB flag

S

StevensOnln1

_{sentiment_very_satisfied}Platinum

11:18 AM

Chris.SE: The red dots on Cellmapper show sites where the location has been calculated automatically, which can sometimes be very inaccurate if there is little mapping data for that particular cell site. The yellow dots are sites which have been located by users (any registered user can move cell sites so some locations may be guesses if the actual location cannot be located visually). Clicking on each dot will show the mapped coverage for each cell sector (most sites are configured with antennas pointing in 2, 3 or sometimes 4 different directions to provide coverage in all directions).

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StevensOnln1's 3,569 posts GB flag

Transmitter engineering