Full Freeview on the Ridge Hill (County of Herefordshire, England) transmitter
 | Google Streetview |  | Google map |  | Bing map |  | Google Earth |  | 51.997,-2.540 or 51°59'49"N 2°32'25"W |  | HR8 2PG |
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 22/04/2024 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 withheldMonday, 25 September 2023
Transmitter engineering
5:10 AM
5:10 AM
Ridge Hill transmitter - Ridge Hill transmitter: Possible effect on TV reception week commencing 25/09/2023 Pixelation or flickering on some or all channels [DUK]
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Monday, 9 October 2023
Transmitter engineering
11:19 AM
11:19 AM
Ridge Hill transmitter - Ridge Hill transmitter: Possible effect on TV reception week commencing 09/10/2023 Pixelation or flickering on some or all channels [DUK]
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Thursday, 12 October 2023
M
Marion10:11 AM
No signal for over a week. No channels available at all and no information as to if or when service will be restored
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C
Chris.SE1:32 PM
Marion:
Did you retune when you had no signal? That will have cleared your correct tuning!
The Ridge Hill transmitter is also having Planned Engineering which will not help if you are in a weaker signal area but as you haven't provided a full postcode I can't check that.
Reception in many areas has been disrupted by the recent weather conditions -
They have been causing Tropospheric Ducting affecting much of the south coast and southern parts of the country on last Saturday and extending into the Midlands and North of the country through Sunday including East Anglia, then affecting all Wales and England. These conditions have been unusually quite extreme on occasion recently.
This causes interfering signals from distant transmitters in Europe or the UK to affect reception of your wanted signals. This can periodically last, seconds, minutes and sometimes much longer - Do NOT Retune. (If you'd been correctly tuned I cannot understand why people think retuning will help when the set says no signal, it's not going to get a signal that's not there!).
There is nothing you can do about this situation apart from wait for conditions to change, or use online streaming if available.
IF you did retune, you'd be best manually retuning the UHF channels for your transmitter, as detailed in the top section of the relevant transmitter page, or now as the conditions have substantially gone away an automatic retune may restore all your channels.
The BBC and Freeview had issued warnings -
High pressure weather conditions impacting TV & Radio services - from 07 October | Help receiving TV and radio
High pressure could affect reception across parts of the UK this week | Freeview
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Sunday, 15 October 2023
N
Nick 1:46 PM
What's happened to channel 21 multiplex. Did manual tune, 0 signal strength 0 signal quality.
All other multiplexes are normal in strength and quality.
Postcode GL52EL
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C
Chris.SE3:41 PM
Nick :
Hi Nick. The predictions for the COM muxes in your locale SDN/COM4, ArqA/COM5 & ArqB/COM6 are poor. How well do you normally get/are you getting COMs 5 & 6 ?
There is Planned Engineering at Ridge Hill and you may have just picked a bad moment to retune and if you did that earlier this morning there was still a little bit of this "Tropo" weather conditions about as well, but should be clear now.
What strength and quality figures do you have for the PSB muxes?
Have you got any aerial amp/splitter to feed more than one set/box? Have you got a 5G filter fitted before the amp if you have? You should have had a postcard from https://restoretv.uk
If you haven't got a filter fitted, you can get a free one from them.
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Monday, 16 October 2023
Transmitter engineering
5:10 AM
5:10 AM
Ridge Hill transmitter - Ridge Hill transmitter: Possible effect on TV reception week commencing 16/10/2023 Pixelation or flickering on some or all channels [DUK]
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Wednesday, 18 October 2023
S
Steve Donaldson1:03 AM
Nick : Should you not be aware, I have made the observation that the Chalford relay broadcasts on channels 21, 24 and 27 with vertical polarity. It has been co-channel with Ridge Hill's COMs since digital switchover. This is not to suggest that it might be the cause of your reception issue.
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Monday, 23 October 2023
N
Nick 2:44 PM
Chris.SE: sorry Chris only just seen your reply. Where do I start in replying. Its a fairly complicated set up here, all home made! I have two aerials one for the stroud relay and a horizontal antiferance high gain for Ridge hill.
These are fed into a home made combiner which filters the two bands of frequencies. Has about half a db loss on the Ridge hill input. Just to complicate things more I have a home made amplifier (14 db)on the Ridge hill input. Then after all that mess it comes out the combiner and goes into a distribution amplifier which feeds two sets in my house and also the neighbours! There's also a tuned notch on the high side of the combiner for 4g . As for signals on the various multiplexes. Ch 22, 25, 28, 29 are all 100 signal 100 quality.
Ch 24 is variable but around 97% signal 60% quality, much the same on ch 27. They do vary considerably though, but fairly reliable. I'm not too bothered really as there's little worth watching on ch 21 multiplex. It just intrigues me! I've connected my spectrum analyzer to the system and all multiplexes are present and correct but you can clearly see the 3 lower power ones. Some one else commented that the Chalford really could be a problem, well its too weak and feeble here and cross polarised.
Tropo can cause problems but still the situation is the same now with normal propagation.
Anyway thanks for your reply and hope the above makes sense. My complicated system has always worked fairly well! Best wishes nick
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C
Chris.SE4:06 PM
Nick :
Hi Nick, thanks for the reply. That sounds like a great setup, and no doubt I shall have to watch my Ps & Qs to make sure I'm not telling granny how to suck eggs :D
Three things really just to mention.
Watch the 100% signal. I'm sure you are capable, but better to measure the signals strength that's actually going to the tuner input and make sure it's not too high as overloaded front ends (as I'm sure you know) can cause identical problem as too weak a signal or loads of interference.
Some sets/boxes will still show 100% even if it were say eg.120%, others will sometimes show a misleading reduction in the strength figure so eg. could shown 80% when in fact it could be 140% plucking a number out of the air! It all depends on where it's actually being measured in the set and what the AGC is doing (as I'm sure you realise).
With the Planned Engineering work, depending on what they are doing (they never give us the detail), if for example they are using the reserve antenna for any of the multiplexes, the signal reaching you could be much lower (because of the terrain) than operating on reduced power. Then that combined with any significant Tropo or even a bit of simple temperature inversion (which could occur more easily) might make signals from Chalford (or anywhere else of course) more significant. Remember also that polarisation can change a bit on route depending on multiple factors, terrain etc. and aerials aren't perfect either - even home brew ;)
Ridge Hill is no longer listed for Planned Engineering, so the work should be complete (for now!), but I've found the listings inaccurate on occasion :(
Make sure your filtering is taking out any 700MHz Mobile mast stuff (often inaccurately referred to as 5G as it could also be 4G depending on operator and location). One would expect such 700MHz interference to have greatest impact on the higher channels esp. C48, however I've seen a few odd cases where it seems to have had a more marked effect on channels as low as C24/C25 etc. so I now take nothing for granted.
Your filtering may already block 700MHz, but if not and you don't want to build your own, as already mentioned you can get a free one from restoretv.uk
All the best.
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