Full Freeview on the Ridge Hill (County of Herefordshire, England) transmitter
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The symbol shows the location of the Ridge Hill (County of Herefordshire, England) transmitter which serves 270,000 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 Ridge Hill (County of Herefordshire, England) mast?
Ridge Hill transmitter - Ridge Hill transmitter: Possible effect on TV reception week commencing 15/04/2024 Pixelation or flickering on some or all channels 
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Digital television services are broadcast on a multiplexes (or Mux) where many stations occupy a single broadcast frequency, as shown below.
64QAM 8K 3/4 27.1Mb/s DVB-T MPEG2
H/V: aerial position (horizontal or vertical)
Which Freeview channels does the Ridge 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.
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 Ridge Hill transmitter?
BBC Midlands Today 2.9m homes 10.9%
from Birmingham B1 1RF, 69km northeast (39°)
to BBC West Midlands region - 66 masts.
ITV Central News 2.9m homes 10.9%
from Birmingham B1 2JT, 69km northeast (39°)
to ITV Central (West) region - 65 masts.
All of lunch, weekend and 80% evening news is shared with Central (East)
Are there any self-help relays?
| Whitton | Transposer | 35 km NW Hereford | 40 homes |
How will the Ridge Hill (County of Herefordshire, England) transmission frequencies change over time?
| 1968-80s | 1984-97 | 1997-98 | 1998-2011 | 2011-13 | 1 Mar 2018 | ||||
| VHF | A K T | A K T | A K T | W T | W T | ||||
| C6 | ITVwaves | ||||||||
| C21 | +SDN | SDN | |||||||
| C22 | BBC1waves | BBC1waves | BBC1waves | +BBCB | BBCB | ||||
| C24 | ArqA | ArqA | |||||||
| C25 | ITVwaves | ITVwaves | ITVwaves | D3+4 | D3+4 | ||||
| C27 | ArqB | ArqB | |||||||
| C28 | BBC2waves | BBC2waves | BBC2waves | BBCA | BBCA | ||||
| C29 | D3+4 | ||||||||
| C30 | _local | ||||||||
| C32 | C4waves | C4waves | C4waves | com7 | |||||
| C34 | com8 | ||||||||
| C35 | C5waves | C5waves | |||||||
| C51tv_off | _local | _local | |||||||
| C55tv_off | com7tv_off | ||||||||
| C56tv_off | COM8tv_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 6 Apr 11 and 20 Apr 11.
How do the old analogue and currrent digital signal levels compare?
| Analogue 1-5 | 100kW | |
| BBCA, D3+4, PSB2 iw, BBCB | (-7dB) 20kW | |
| com7 | (-9.8dB) 10.5kW | |
| SDN, ARQA, ARQB | (-10dB) 10kW | |
| com8 | (-10.1dB) 9.8kW | |
| Mux 1*, Mux 2*, Mux A*, Mux B*, Mux C*, Mux D* | (-17dB) 2kW |
Which companies have run the Channel 3 services in the Ridge Hill transmitter area
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Is the transmitter output the same in all directions?
Radiation patterns withheldWednesday, 10 May 2023
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Richard Sutton7:22 AM
Just to update this thread again, whilst everything in my home has remained exactly the same, the wind has varied from breezy to flat calm over the last few days but C25 has been the same reception as the strong stations with a signal strength of 95% and a quality of 100%. Reception is now perfect and this is totally the opposite end of the scale from when I started this thread a week or two ago.
C24 is still breaking up badly and seems to be unchanged signal-wise but I'm not so concerned about that channel.
I would therefore reassess my previous conclusion and suggest that the reception of C25 is not being affected by the conifer tree. As nothing has changed in my house, surely the change must either be something further away which I cannot see in the line of sight between my house and the transmitter or something to do with the transmitter itself.
Because C24 is still the same as it was, I must presume that the latter is the case and that some adjustment has been made to the C25 transmitter but not the C24 transmitter. Hopefully, the same changes will be made to C24 eventually.
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Friday, 12 May 2023
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Chris.SE3:47 AM
Richard Sutton:
I'm afraid that your assumptions and conclusions are flawed.
There's been no Planned Engineering listed for Ridge Hill in recent weeks and there's been no listed faults that I've found in this period. Therefore there would be no reason why the D3&4 multiplex would not have been transmitted correctly.
Apart from which, if there had been an unreported fault, lots more people would be complaining AND you've had this issue for a very lengthy period.
Also as previously mentioned, all 6 multiplexes are transmitted from the same antenna, albeit the PSBs are 20kW and the COMs 10kW, this makes little difference to coverage until you start getting into fringe areas.
Your location has line-of-sight to the Ridge Hill transmitter, so anything further away from you that you cannot see will have a negligible effect on received signals.
You haven't commented whether you have tweaked the amp/splitter gain down as suggested to try and optimise the Quality across the multiplexes.
If you have simply put everything back as it was, then I expect little to change over time.
You also seem to have ignored checking for any possible sources of interference that may be especially affecting C24.
Does the amp/splitter have an unused VHF input at all? If so, try putting a shorting coax plug in it to see whether that has any effect.
Assuming at the end of the day, interference is not the cause, as I previously explained, trees can cause multipath reflections which can affect a (very) narrow band of frequencies and may only cause an issue at certain distances away. So the combination of the distance of the tree from your aerial and it's physical nature might result in primarily C24 being affected.
As for alternatives, did you look at the possible line-of-sight issues for Sutton Coldfield, Malvern or Lark Stoke from your aerial location? Any large trees in the way?
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Richard Sutton8:52 AM
Oh well, after a few days of working at 100% quality, for the last two days it has degraded back to around 15% +/- 15% and is unwatchable again.
I have set the gain as best I can in the loft and dispensed with the lounge booster. The house does not change from day to day so I cannot see how anything in the house can be causing such massive variations in strength on one channel. It can be 100% for several days running throughout the entire period and then continuously unusable for another couple of weeks. There is nothing in the house that is switched off for several days and then switched on for several days.
When you say, "You also seem to have ignored checking for any possible sources of interference that may be especially affecting C24", I keep saying that the house is the same every day. I don't understand how I am supposed to check for interference? Nothing at all is changing in the house and there is only me here but the C25 quality is 100% one day and 10% the next so I don't understand how anything in the house could be causing this?
The booster has one input which is connected to the roof aerial.
I live in a rural setting so there are trees in all directions but the conifer is the only one that is so close that I can see that it is in the direction of the transmitter. There are no transmitters which are literally "line of sight". Even if I had a telescope and could get as high as my aerial, I do not believe that I would actually see any antenna as we are surrounded by low hills and there is no transmitter on any of those particular hills. As you would expect, Evesham is in the Vale of Evesham and all the transmitter antennas are mounted on hills which are beyond those which actually surround the vale.
The only way I could check this is to ask the installer to return. He has been here three times over the last 25 years since the house was built and each time he has spun the aerial around and checked the reception with a meter. For the first few years we thought that Sutton Coldfield was the best but there were some stations I could not watch so he spun it around to Ridge Hill which was better on some but worse on others. It's always a compromise of what I am prepared to see and what I'm prepared to miss.
Unfortunately, whilst Evesham town itself now has cable internet, we do not as none of the firms will lay a special cable just for a handful of remote homes despite dozens of requests so our internet is awful. BT say that we will have cable by 2025 so maybe I just have to wait until then before abandoning VHF.
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S
StevensOnln110:16 AM
Richard Sutton: Rather than waiting for faster broadband to be available, have you considered getting Freesat? As long as you have a clear view of the sky to the south you should have no problem with reception and it is just a one-off cost for the box and having a dish/cabling installed (there is no ongoing subscription payment) and you get almost all the same channels that are available on Freeview (plus a few others).
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Richard Sutton10:37 AM
Hi Steve.
I have been trying to avoid satellite as I installed it myself in my two homes before this one when it was the only way to get some channels. I think it was call BSB in those days. It shouldn't be necessary these days so I'm reluctant to start drilling holes in walls to feed cables through as I did previously.
One further thought I've come up with is that there are high voltage pylons also running across my line to the transmitter and, although they are much further away than the conifer tree, I reckon one one the pylons is probably directly in the aerial - tree - pylon - Breedon Hill - transmitter line.
Could a pylon affect certain channels and do the loads on the cables vary such that some days there would be virtually no interference?
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Chris.SE12:39 PM
StevensOnln1:
I did suggest considering Freesat a few posts back, and if the set already has a satellite tuner, just dish and LNB required.
Richard Sutton:
Again, you are drawing false conclusions when it comes to interference. Just because nothing has changed in the house does not mean something isn't causing a problem. If you continue to ignore the possibility then obviously nothing will change. As for the power lines & pylon, it's highly improbable at the distance they are away that they'll have any effect whatsoever.
Any potential source of interference in the house (or very nearby) could fluctuate depending on the equipment responsible, but as the signal affected may also be varying, it may not take much signal variation for the interference to have a significant effect. If the set is capable of decoding the signal with few errors then you'll likely get 100% quality. The errors may only need to increase somewhat and decoding falls over the "cliff edge" - a phrase you may have heard of in relation to digital signals.
Without specialist equipment, like a spectrum analyser which a very qualified (probably CAI approved) installer may have, the only other way of eliminating as many possibilities as one can is to go round unplugging/totally switching off (not on standby) all electrical/electronic equipment).
There's also a possibility of something generating a harmonic RF signal, that "may" be getting picked up by any unused VHF input on the amp/splitter and make matters worse - I think that's less likely as the issue didn't seem to be better without the amp/splitter.
You've had this problem for several years, I cannot understand why you stubbornly don't try and eliminate as many potential causes as you can that don't cost anything to do.
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Richard Sutton3:03 PM
As I said, there is no unused input on the booster.
I just don't understand what it is that I am supposed to be turning off? Are you suggesting every electrical device in the house or just those which are on the floor which has the loft or the bedroom floor below. Surely the internet router on the ground floor could not interfere with something two floors above and interfere so as to block the signal one day but allow 100% quality the next?
There is nothing electrical which is on on the top (loft) floor.
The central heating and the microwave, also two floors below the router, are off although the central heating is not turned off at the mains. There is one electrical device on the bedroom level which is a mains alarm clock and that is now off.
There is a Humax recorded in the lounge although I have had three of those over the last 20 years and the problems have always existed but I have just tried turning that off at the mains as well and it makes no difference.
I've just tried turning off the router even though it is two floors down but it doesn't make any difference. The fridge-freezer is on, of course, but the dishwasher, washing machine and tumble dryer are all off. However, these are all two floors down from the booster.
I checked the C25 quality but turning those appliances on the ground floor off haven't made any difference either.
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Chris.SE11:25 PM
Evesham
Richard Sutton:
Sorry, I did miss your comment about only one input on the booster, I was side tracked by the pylon & power lines :(
Quote "I just don't understand what it is that I am supposed to be turning off? Are you suggesting every electrical device in the house ...... "
YES, everything electrical/electronic. I did say "Any potential source of interference in the house (or very nearby) could fluctuate depending on the equipment responsible, but as the signal affected may also be varying, it may not take much signal variation for the interference to have a significant effect.
I did make reference to the "cliff-edge".
Interference doesn't just get radiated (transmitted) it can travel along mains wiring direct to equipment but the wiring can also radiate the interfering signals as well. Worst case scenarios are eg. interference from faulty street lights as it's often difficult to track down, but they re usually easy to eliminate if the interference is 24/7 and the street light is only on after dark rather than stuck on!
Don't overlook anything that may have some sort of electronic control - a lot of modern fridge freezers for example have electronic controls as does modern central heating.
Some LED or fluorescent lighting etc can also cause issues but again only when on unless it's PIR or dawn/dusk controlled.
Digital/electronic anything has potential, if poorly designed or has developed a fault - not necessarily outwardly noticeable!
It's simply just easier to eliminate something by unplugging it at the mains, or switching off a circuit at a Consumer Unit (if it's not the one with the distribution amp or the TV!).
Even if you find nothing in the house (including outbuildings), at least you know it not something you can have control over.
Whilst it's rather obvious you are in a rural location surrounded by low hills, you are taking "line-of-sight" a little too literally, a low hill that's not immediately close to you and some distance away usually doesn't have that much of an effect on a powerful transmitter whose mast is around 400m asl even if you can't see it (Sutton Coldfield) or around 360m asl (Ridge Hill). In any event reception predictors take account of this sort of thing, some can check line-of-sight (that doesn't necessarily mean that it's physically visible to the eye), it's the direction of the transmitter from your location and obvious permanent obstructions and tell you how far away the obstruction is). What predictors cannot take into account is very nearby trees like your conifer, or eg. a neighbours very tall barn with a tin roof that's directly on the line of your aerial !
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Chris.SE's: mapC's Freeview map terrainC's terrain plot wavesC's frequency data C's Freeview Detailed Coverage
Friday, 19 May 2023
Transmitter engineering
10:08 AM
10:08 AM
Ridge Hill transmitter - Ridge Hill transmitter: Possible effect on TV reception week commencing 15/05/2023 Pixelation or flickering on some or all channels [DUK]
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Monday, 22 May 2023
Transmitter engineering
4:08 AM
4:08 AM
Ridge Hill transmitter - Ridge Hill transmitter: Possible effect on TV reception week commencing 22/05/2023 Pixelation or flickering on some or all channels [DUK]
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