Full Freeview on the Kilvey Hill (Swansea, Wales) transmitter

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

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51.629,-3.920 or 51°37'45"N 3°55'12"W

SA1 7BL

The symbol shows the location of the Kilvey Hill (Swansea, Wales) transmitter which serves 120,000 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 Kilvey Hill (Swansea, Wales) mast?

Kilvey Hill transmitter - Kilvey Hill transmitter: Possible effect on TV reception week commencing 25/09/2023 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 Kilvey Hill 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	C21 (474.0MHz)	243m	DTG-	2,000W
	1 BBC One (SD) Wales, 2 BBC Two Wales, 9 BBC Four, 23 BBC Three, 201 CBBC, 202 CBeebies, 231 BBC News, 232 BBC Parliament, 250 BBC Red Button, plus 13 others
PSB2 D3+4	V max	C24 (498.0MHz)	243m	DTG-	2,000W
	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 (Wales),
PSB3 BBCB	V max	C27 (522.0MHz)	243m	DTG-	2,000W
	46 5SELECT, 101 BBC One HD Wales, 102 BBC Two HD Wales, 104 Channel 4 HD South ads, 105 Channel 5 HD, 106 BBC Four HD, 110 Channel 4 HD (Wales), 204 CBBC HD, 205 CBeebies HD, plus 1 others 66 TBN UK,
COM4 SDN	V max	C25 (506.0MHz)	243m	DTG-8	2,000W
	E4 (Wales), 20 Drama, 21 5USA, 29 ITV2 +1, 32 5STAR, 33 5Action, 38 Channel 5 +1, 41 Legend, 57 Dave ja vu, 58 ITVBe +1, 59 ITV3 +1, 64 Blaze, 67 CBS Reality, 69 HorrorXtra, 78 TCC, 81 Blaze +1, 89 ITV4 +1, 91 WildEarth, 203 CITV, 208 Pop Player, 209 Ketchup TV, 210 Ketchup Too, 211 YAAAS!, plus 15 others
COM5 ArqA	V max	C22 (482.0MHz)	243m	DTG-8	2,000W
	Smithsonian Channel, 11 Sky Arts, 17 Really, 19 Dave, 31 E4 Extra, 36 pick, 40 Quest Red, 43 Food Network, 47 Film4 +1, 48 Challenge, 49 4seven, 60 Drama +1, 70 Quest +1, 71 That's 60s, 74 Yesterday +1, 75 That's 70s, 233 Sky News, plus 9 others
COM6 ArqB	V max	C28 (530.0MHz)	243m	DTG-8	2,000W
	Quest Red +1, Classic Hits, 12 Quest, 25 W, 27 Yesterday, 34 GREAT! movies, 39 DMAX, 44 HGTV, 52 GREAT! romance, 73 HobbyMaker, 76 That's 80s, 82 Talking Pictures TV, 83 Together TV, 84 PBS America, 90 Together TV +1, 235 Al Jazeera Eng, plus 19 others

DTG-8 64QAM 8K 3/4 27.1Mb/s DVB-T MPEG2
H/V: aerial position (horizontal or vertical)

The Kilvey Hill (Swansea, Wales) mast is a public service broadcasting (PSB) transmitter, it does not provide these commercial (COM) channels: .

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 Kilvey Hill transmitter?

BBC Wales Today 1.2m homes 4.7%
from Cardiff CF5 2YQ, 50km east-southeast (108°)
to BBC Wales region - 206 masts.

ITV Cymru Wales 1.2m homes 4.7%
from Cardiff CF5 6XJ, 49km east-southeast (113°)
to ITV Wales region - 206 masts.

Are there any self-help relays?

New Inn C/p

Transposer

8 km NE Tenby

1 homes 100 caravans

How will the Kilvey Hill (Swansea, Wales) transmission frequencies change over time?

	1950s-80s	1984-97	1997-98	1998-2009	2009-13	17 Jul 2019
	VHF	A K T	A K T	A K T	A K T	A K T
C2	BBCtv_waves
C21						BBCA
C22					ArqA	ArqA
C23		ITV_waves	ITV_waves	ITV_waves	BBCA
C24						D3+4
C25					SDN	SDN
C26		BBC2_waves	BBC2_waves	BBC2_waves	D3+4
C27						BBCB
C28					ArqB	ArqB
C29		C4_waves	C4_waves	C4_waves	BBCB
C30					_local
C33		BBC1_waves	BBC1_waves	BBC1_waves
C34						_local
C35			C5_waves	C5_waves

_{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 12 Aug 09 and 9 Sep 09.

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

Analogue 1-5	10kW
SDN, ARQA, ARQB, BBCA, D3+4, BBCB	(-7dB) 2kW
Mux 1, Mux 2, Mux B*	(-12.2dB) 600W
Mux A*	(-15.2dB) 300W
Mux C, Mux D	(-20dB) 100W

Local transmitter maps

Kilvey Hill Freeview Kilvey Hill DAB Kilvey Hill TV region BBC Wales Wales

Which companies have run the Channel 3 services in the Kilvey Hill transmitter area

Jan 1958-Jul 1968	Television Wales and the West
Jul 1968-Feb 2004	Harlech 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. Kilvey Hill 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?

Radiation patterns withheld

C

Chris.SE

_{sentiment_very_satisfied}Platinum

3:13 PM

Carl Lewis:

You should never retune when you have or loss of signal due to that, or Planned or faults that cause pixellation or . In most instances this just clears the correct tuning of the affected multiplexes and you end up with nothing or tuned to the wrong (more distant) transmitter.
If you are correctly tuned, do NOT retune it serves no purpose.
The only instance where a retune may be suggested (usually advised by an on-screen pop-up) is where a commercial operator changes one of their on one of the COM multiplexes. If you happen to be in an "awkward" area then a manual retune on the UHF channel(s) for the affected (es) is usually the best suggestion.

Your predicted reception at your locale is not the best, although it could depend on where you are within your postcode as it could be variable, even poor or good! for some multiplexes.
This is because you might receive signals from other more distant transmitters (and there are several in parts of Devon, , also parts of S.) that use the same frequencies and in normal conditions it wouldn't be a problem. Matters will be made worse in weather conditions that enable the TV signals to travel a lot further than normal - we have had such conditions of late. When there is very strong "Tropospheric Ducting" even signals from Europe can be received (see How does good weather affect my television? | Help receiving TV and radio and the links on those pages for a simplistic explanation). Not all multiplexes will be affected at the same time or for the same lengths of time. A lot of aerials have "side-lobes" which can receive signals from directions other than the one the is pointing.

Checking that your aerial is intact with no missing elements, is pointing in the correct direction (bearing 314 degrees - NW at your locale) with the rods (or squashed Xs) vertical.

The best thing to do will be to do a Manual retune for as follows - first, unplug the aerial and do a full automatic retune. This should clear all previous (and incorrect) tuning.
Plug the aerial back in, and in the TV's tuning section, do a manual for each UHF channel -
For Kilvey Hill it's , , , for the PSB1/BBCA, PSB2/D3&4, PSB3/BBCB HD multiplexes and , , & for the COM4/SDN, COM5/ArqA & COM6/ArqB multiplexes, also for the Local (Swansea) multiplex.
(C means UHF channel).

You may have to repeat that procedure a few times whilst/if interfering conditions persist over the weekend which some predictions suggest.

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Transmitter engineering