Full Freeview on the Sudbury (Suffolk, England) transmitter
 | Google Streetview |  | Google map |  | Bing map |  | Google Earth |  | 52.005,0.786 or 52°0'17"N 0°47'8"E |  | CO10 5NG |
The symbol shows the location of the Sudbury (Suffolk, England) transmitter which serves 440,000 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 Sudbury (Suffolk, England) mast?
Sudbury transmitter - Sudbury transmitter: Possible effect on TV reception week commencing 18/11/2024 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)
The Sudbury (Suffolk, England) 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 Freeview channels does the Sudbury 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)
The Sudbury (Suffolk, England) 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 Sudbury transmitter?
BBC Look East (East) 0.8m homes 3.2%
from Norwich NR2 1BH, 77km north-northeast (24°)
to BBC East region - 27 masts.
70% of BBC East (East) and BBC East (West) is shared output
ITV Anglia News 0.8m homes 3.2%
from NORWICH NR1 3JG, 78km north-northeast (24°)
to ITV Anglia (East) region - 26 masts.
All of lunch, weekend and 80% evening news is shared with Anglia (West)
Are there any self-help relays?
| Felixstowe West | Transposer | 1000 homes +1000 or more homes due to expansion of affected area? | |
| Witham | Transposer | 14 km NE Chelmsford. | 118 homes |
How will the Sudbury (Suffolk, England) transmission frequencies change over time?
| 1984-97 | 1997-98 | 1998-2011 | 2011-13 | 1 Aug 2018 | |||||
| B E T | B E T | B E T | E T | K T | |||||
| C29 | SDN | ||||||||
| C31 | ArqA | ||||||||
| C35 | C5waves | C5waves | |||||||
| C37 | ArqB | ||||||||
| C41 | ITVwaves | ITVwaves | ITVwaves | D3+4 | D3+4 | ||||
| C44 | BBC2waves | BBC2waves | BBC2waves | BBCA | BBCA | ||||
| C47 | C4waves | C4waves | C4waves | BBCB | BBCB | ||||
| C51tv_off | BBC1waves | BBC1waves | BBC1waves | ||||||
| C56tv_off | ArqB | ||||||||
| C58tv_off | SDN | ||||||||
| C60tv_off | -ArqA |
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 Jul 11 and 20 Jul 11.
How do the old analogue and currrent digital signal levels compare?
| Analogue 1-4 | 250kW | |
| SDN, ARQA, ARQB, BBCA, D3+4, BBCB | (-4dB) 100kW | |
| Analogue 5 | (-7dB) 50kW | |
| Mux 2* | (-14.9dB) 8.1kW | |
| Mux B* | (-15.2dB) 7.5kW | |
| Mux 1* | (-15.5dB) 7kW | |
| Mux A* | (-17dB) 5kW | |
| Mux C* | (-22.2dB) 1.5kW | |
| Mux D* | (-23.6dB) 1.1kW |
Which companies have run the Channel 3 services in the Sudbury transmitter area
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Wednesday, 22 August 2018
MikeP
10:32 AM
10:32 AM
Nick:
Reducing the voltage supplied to the amplifier is very likely to seriously affect the way it operates. The electronics is designed to operate with a specified supply voltage and if that reduces it may well not work as originally intended. Think of what happens to a radio when the batteries are going flat. Think of how a battery powered clock slows down when the battery needs replacing.
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H
Hardy11:05 AM
re optimising gain and avoiding interference. adjustable gain amplifiers are not that expensive . Mounting the aerial in the clear to avoid picking up reflections helps as does multi element and stacked aerials .Where interfering transmitters are behind the aerial choose one with low reverse pick up.
"foreign" interference comes via refraction in the atmosphere (trophospere) rather like the effect of a mirage where a distant town can be seen further away than it should. UHF does not bounce from the ionosphere. Its best to have gain in the aerial as amplifier gain comes with noise and the possibility of strong interference knocking out several channels rather than one.
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Hardy, thank you, you are a very helpful fellow.
Please explain what you mean by a stacked array.
Does a variable gain amplifier have a knob in the room you can turn? I have seen amps with several sockets of different gain, but cannot keep taking down aerial to try each one! No good experimenting at 8ft height in the garden as gain is higher on the roof.
How about connecting the aerial amp to its supply, but between supply and tv using an old volume control?
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Thursday, 23 August 2018
MikeP
10:28 AM
10:28 AM
Nick Horrex:
Mast-head amplifiers are all fixed gain and sealed against water ingress to protect the electronics. Variable gain amplifiers are not waterproofed at all as they are designed to sit close to the TV. Sadly that is not the best place for the amplifier as the downlead picks up extraneous signals/noise that you don't want and that gets amplified as well. So the best place for an amplifier is at the mast head immediately under the aerial, but a few inches away.
An old volume control does not work in the way you seem to think, so will be useless for what you describe. Likewise, a variable gain control on a signal amplifier is not something you can just put into the leads - it has associated electronics that are an essential part of a controlled gain amplifier.
Depending on the design of the amplifier, varying the supply voltage will not achieve the variable gain you seek. In many cases reducing the voltage will initially have no effect until you reduce the voltage enough - when it will stop working altogether! So no signal at all. In other cases it will have little effect but may cause the amplifier to become unstable, so pretty useless.
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thanks Mike
behind tv all in one amps are useless, agreed.
I have seen masthead amps with 4 different sockets, each with a different gain. I assumed this was so you could connect to the most appropriate, rather than run 4 tvs where they would each state the same gain. Please clarify.
Now, assuming I am correct in stating that where there are 4 gain options, am I wasting my time putting the aerial at a convenient 6ft from the ground, [it still works] and connecting to the terminal which provides the best stable signal, and then transfer it to the roof? I am concerned that on the roof it might have preferred a lower gain socket, but I cannot keep taking the thing down to experiment.
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H
Hardy9:09 PM
There are variable gain masthead amplifiers readily available. The ones I have seen cannot be adjusted remotely. Though it sounds like a great idea. Stacked aerials are two or more above each other. They might reduce pick up of distant transmitters. Whereas side by side aerials will narrow the reception beam to reduce pick up of unwanted transmitters near to the same direction as the wanted transmitter.
You could have the amplifier in the loft preferably connected by low loss coax (satellite type) but next to the aerial is the best position. At 30miles from Tac I have set my amp to about 18db ,but may reduce it when I get a higher gain aerial.
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Saturday, 25 August 2018
Hardy, please tell me HOW you adjust this amp. I have not seen such, only the ones with 4 inputs, each with different gain specified.
Re stacked aerials, I have not seen these for many years. They were used prior to having high gain aerials, and were generally 18 element, folded dipole, no balun. Their problem was that the impedance was halved by joining two together, the net effect being little improvement over one aerial. So far as I am aware, this is why they designed directors in 'shallow x' form or triple boom types, so that all the directors fed one dipole.
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H
Hardy3:58 PM
Nick . This is a typical variable gain amp . you set gain with a screwdriver anywhere between 7 and 22 db.
Proception 7-22 dB 1 Way Variable Gain Aerial Masthead Amplifier with F-Type Connection Power Supply: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics
The aerial principles such as combining and stacking from analogue days . are still valid . Of course baluns are now always used and correct methods of filtering and impedance matching too. Even connecting two parallel aerials to a standard splitter will give correct matching .Though only around 2db gain over a single aerial the combination has a narrower beam . Useful to reject off beam interference. Like you say some of the modern aerials are as good as a pair of yagis .Combining bigger aerials gets expensive.
heres a website with loads of info and aerial tests that might help. Aerials, TV Aerial and Digital Aerial
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thanks, Hardy,
Please confirm my suspicion that if I set the correct gain with the aerial conveniently at 8ft from the ground, it would not be appropriate when the aerial is on the roof.
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