Full Freeview on the Sandy Heath (Central Bedfordshire, England) transmitter
 | Google Streetview |  | Google map |  | Bing map |  | Google Earth |  | 52.130,-0.242 or 52°7'47"N 0°14'33"W |  | SG19 2NH |
The symbol shows the location of the Sandy Heath (Central Bedfordshire, England) transmitter which serves 920,000 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 Sandy Heath (Central Bedfordshire, England) mast?
Sandy Heath transmitter - Sandy Heath transmitter: Possible effect on TV reception week commencing 04/12/2023 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 Sandy Heath 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 Sandy Heath transmitter?
BBC Look East (West) 1.0m homes 3.7%
from Cambridge CB4 0WZ, 29km east-northeast (65°)
to BBC Cambridge region - 4 masts.
70% of BBC East (East) and BBC East (West) is shared output
ITV Anglia News 1.0m homes 3.7%
from Norwich NR1 3JG, 119km east-northeast (60°)
to ITV Anglia (West) region - 5 masts.
All of lunch, weekend and 80% evening news is shared with Anglia (East)
How will the Sandy Heath (Central Bedfordshire, England) transmission frequencies change over time?
| 1965-80s | 1984-97 | 1997-98 | 1998-2011 | 2011-13 | 12 Feb 2020 | ||||
| VHF | A K T | K T | K T | W T | W T | ||||
| C6 | ITVwaves | ||||||||
| C21 | C4waves | C4waves | C4waves | +BBCB | BBCB | ||||
| C24 | ITVwaves | ITVwaves | ITVwaves | D3+4 | D3+4 | ||||
| C27 | BBC2waves | BBC2waves | BBC2waves | BBCA | BBCA | ||||
| C31 | BBC1waves | BBC1waves | BBC1waves | ||||||
| C32 | com7 | ||||||||
| C33 | SDN | ||||||||
| C34 | com8 | ||||||||
| C35 | _local | ||||||||
| C36 | ArqA | ||||||||
| C39 | C5waves | C5waves | |||||||
| C43 | _local | ||||||||
| C48 | ArqB | ArqB | |||||||
| C51tv_off | SDN | ||||||||
| C52tv_off | ArqA | ||||||||
| 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 30 Mar 11 and 13 Apr 11.
How do the old analogue and currrent digital signal levels compare?
| Analogue 1-4 | 1000kW | |
| BBCA, D3+4, BBCB | (-7.4dB) 180kW | |
| SDN, ARQA, ARQB | (-7.7dB) 170kW | |
| com7 | (-13dB) 49.6kW | |
| com8 | (-13.1dB) 49.1kW | |
| Mux 1*, Mux 2*, Mux A*, Mux B*, Mux C*, Mux D* | (-17dB) 20kW | |
| Analogue 5 | (-20dB) 10kW |
Which companies have run the Channel 3 services in the Sandy Heath transmitter area
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Tuesday, 17 July 2012
N
NigelJ10:52 PM
Wisbech
Thank you for your suggestions. A mains network is certainly a possible source of the RF noise. As the problem is restricted to a single RF channel,I am reasonable confident that it is due to external interference rather than multi-path reception, which I assume would not be so frequency channel selective.
My receiver equipment reports a high signal strength on CH27, but intermittently very poor quality. Changing from a 10 down to a 1 or 2 every few minutes.
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NigelJ's: mapN's Freeview map terrainN's terrain plot wavesN's frequency data N's Freeview Detailed Coverage
J
jb3811:35 PM
James Osbourn: Yes, as it was caused by the BBC transmitter being down for 11 minutes from 11:11am, and with the reason it checked out OK with me being because you had only queried the problem at 13:33, which of course it had been back on again for about 2 hours prior to that.
The point about this being, that any time when a channel selected results in a blank screen NEVER be tempted to carry out a retune as the programme will NOT have been lost from the TV's or boxes memory, and all re-tuning does is to guarantee that the memory is wiped clean which necessitates frequent rescans being made to recover the lost channels, whereas if things had been left as they were they would have returned of their own accord.
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Wednesday, 18 July 2012
S
Spa3:23 PM
I live in Ampthill,and I too have been having intermittent problems since the beginning of July with Ch 27 being poor quality! All the other channels are fine. The problem only seems to affect the WinTV-Duet receiver on my PC. All my other tvs and pvr are okay, the drop in quality doesn't seem to bother them.
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Friday, 20 July 2012
N
NigelJ6:32 AM
Wisbech
NigelJ: The quality problems I have been experiencing with Sandy Heath channel 27 have for the moment spontaneously disappeared. I cannot say if this was due to the switch off of a local interference source, a corrected fault at the Sandy Heath transmitter or changes in atmospheric conditions reducing co-channel interference from some other transmitter.
Th fact that the problem was specific to CH27 and that the signal strength was consistently high, seems to rule out multi-path and fading due to atmospheric conditions, as these effect were unlikely to be restricted to only one MUX transmit frequency and would be associated with changes in signal strength.
I would be interested to know if there are any likely candidates as a source of co-channel interference, since this would mean that similar reductions in signal quality can be expected whenever the weather conditions match those of the past few days/weeks.
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NigelJ's: mapN's Freeview map terrainN's terrain plot wavesN's frequency data N's Freeview Detailed Coverage
S
Spa11:55 AM
My problems with ch27 have disappeared as well (for the time being). I was wrong about it only affecting the receiver on my PC. The quality was so bad on Wed afternoon that all my tvs were breaking up.
It looks to be the same problem as NigelJ is having, which indicates it can't be local interference as Ampthill is a long way from Wisbech. I suspect engineering work on the transmitter. The problem appears to be mainly restricted to during the day.
Other people may not be experiencing the same problem because they probably have much better reception than me. There's a slight hill between me and Sandy Heath, so I have to use an amplifier to boost my signal. This is probably why a slight drop in signal strength/quality on a particular channel may be causing a problem for me but not for most people.
Ch27 is perfect today.
It would be a big help if "Transmitter engineering" posts were a little more detailed.
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Saturday, 21 July 2012
N
NigelJ1:34 AM
Wisbech
NigelJ: After a brief period of good reception of CH27 from Sandy Heath, I am back to the strong signal and unusable quality situation. I am now convinced that the problem is due to co-channel interference from other TV transmitters. In my case, most likely from Crystal Palace.
I can only conclude that during the system planning, an insufficient frequency reuse distance was defined to cope with adverse weather conditions.
If the co-channel interference source is in the direct line of the receiving aerial, there does not appear to much that can be done at the receiver to improve the Cr/Ci ratio.
Maybe a few more frequency channels should have been allocated to DTV and fewer to GSM4 LTE.
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NigelJ's: mapN's Freeview map terrainN's terrain plot wavesN's frequency data N's Freeview Detailed Coverage
Friday, 27 July 2012
i keep getting no signal/ bad signal / this channel maybe blocked or scrambled on certain stations , Digital UK says i should be receiving my signal from Sandy Heath as my postcode is LU55HR when i check the signal detection it say Oxon & Bucks, its coming from and Digital Uk says there is no such transmitter ?? strength is good but no quality, i have to daily do a rescan to keep trying to pick up a signal so i can view some of my stations or to get the missing ones like Pick tv , Really, etc back again and when i do get them back i keep getting the same messages and if i am luckily enough to get a picture its keeps breaking up, I have had some one out to check my aerial and it cost me £40 to be told everything was fine and i had good signal strength and quality, i can afford to get some one else out and its driving me mad by having to retune, some of the signal detedtions says they are East Yorks & Lincs ! which is way up country from me, am really at a lost, is there anyone can help please
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that should of read i CANT afford to get some one to come out again
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other signal detection am getting is Cambs & Beds , none of my detections are coming from Sandy Heath have check all the station i have
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J
jb388:07 AM
Suzy: Carry out a factory reset on your TV or box to blank out everything already stored, if you do not see a factory reset option take your aerial out and carry out an auto-tune without it, as this will also blank out the channels stored, then once completed go into your TV or boxes "manual" tuning menu and enter Ch24 followed by pressing "search" or "scan" storing the programmes found if not done automatically.
Once you have completed this action do exactly the same with each of the following channels : 24 - 21(only if HD TV or box) - 51 - 52 - 48.
You "may" be able to bypass having to carry out this procedure if after having carried out an auto-tune you had seen a "select area" option popping up when you would have selected "Cambs & Beds" which "is" Sandy, but it depends on the device you are using and Sandy (20 miles / 36 degrees) is indicated as the station giving the best signal.
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