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 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 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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Friday, 15 August 2014
T
tom5:57 PM
CH 32 signal extremely poor recently . only 10% or no signal at all
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M
MikeB6:00 PM
Max: Although your only 32km from the transmitter, there is something blocking the signal path 1-3km away from your position. It could be that you've also got a problem with your aerial, and its dropping out the Com 7 channels, which are weaker anyway.
Tom: You've given no indication of your position, so there is not a lot that can be said, other than the obvious - check your aerial system, because the TV is telling you there is a problem getting any signal at all. Since Sandy Heath has no reported faults, the problem is likely to be at your end.
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D
Dave7:19 PM
Hi,
I have been experiencing very variable reception recently. We are in Highfields Caldecote, about 7 miles west of Cambridge. Our signal was always really good with no problems up until about a month ago and its been intermittent since then. Some days it will be fine with 100% signal strength and 80-100% signal quality. Other days its unwatchable with 100% signal strength and 0-20% signal quality.
Any ideas?
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Saturday, 16 August 2014
I did a rescan of Freeview built into the TV and no ITV channels were found. Where have they gone from Sandy Heath?
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MikeP
8:46 PM
8:46 PM
Craig:
They are still being transmitted from Sandy Heath. It could be that your signals are being affected by atmospheric propogation phenomena which is not unusual and affects DTV by inducing the receiver to give a 'No Signal' message when it is in fact having problems decoding the signals it is receiving.
Are your neighbours having the same problem with Freeview? Plus, a post code helps contributors to this site to understand where the difficulties may originate.
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J
jb388:59 PM
Craig: ITV is being received perfectly OK up in South Lincolnshire (Stamford) , although the HD service from Sandy is a tad on the glitchy side with sizeable variations in the signal quality being indicated.
However, as far as reception from Sandy is concerned. Northampton, including large swathes of Northamptonshire is an area notorious for suffering from problems with reception from the Sandy transmitter at around this time of the year, the reason for basically down to most of the areas involved "not" being line-of-sight with the transmitter, whereby the signals received from same is via an element of diffraction (signal bending), reception under these sort of conditions being vulnerable to any changes in atmospheric conditions that may take place and the effect of on diffraction, the result of being areas of patchy (or zero) reception.
Changes in atmospheric conditions can also, in some cases, allow distant transmitters to be received, and if any of them happen to be operating on the same channels as Sandy, then the result of the clashing between them is once again, zero reception.
When the aforementioned happened during the analogue years, it usually resulted in ghostly negative images sweeping across the picture, or other forms of visual disturbances such as loss of colour etc but seldom ever the loss of the signal, as one analogue signal does not necessarily wipe out another, whereas where digital reception is involved in most cases it will, as one digital signal corrupts the other and vice versa.
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I had TV issues so did a rescan and found ITV channels aren't recieved. A message comes on screen saying not broadcasting. They were there about 3 weeks ago though. I'm in NN5 area
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J
jb3811:18 PM
Craig: Maybe so! but that message will be originating from "within" your TV or box in response to no signal being detected, as nothing is wrong with Anglia's Mux24.
What to do is, go into the set up menu on whatever you are using and select "tuning" / "manual tune" and enter 24 into the box but NOT followed by pressing search or scan, because on most devices the signal & quality level will appear in the level bars no matter how low the signal may be.
Further info dependant on feedback.
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Sunday, 17 August 2014
S
sb6:30 PM
Cambridge
I live in central Cambridge and the signal is very good on all channels except C48 (690MHz), which has lower signal strength and quality (as shown by the TV on screen) and often breaks up. This seems to be worse when the weather is bad or windy, but maybe it's just a wrong impression.
For the last couple of days I've also had problems on C32 (562MHz), but maybe this is due to the recent works on the transmitter (Sandy Heath - are they finished?)
Anyone else seeing this, and what could be the cause of these frequency "holes"?
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sb's: mapS's Freeview map terrainS's terrain plot wavesS's frequency data S's Freeview Detailed Coverage
Wednesday, 20 August 2014
D
Dave10:37 AM
The reception in south west Milton Keynes has been very poor from Monday 11 August with our our TV reporting less than 50% signal strength with a high BER on our freeview TV's
This did recover last weekend to nearly 100% signal strength and reception was OK but it has now returned to less than 50% is there any issues with the transmitter power level at this time as this problem is affecting all channels
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