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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Friday, 12 November 2021
C
Chris.SE11:07 PM
Aytchgee:
As you may have noticed from the post before yours, Sudbury had been on Planned Engineering. That work should have been completed as the transmitter is no longer listed, but there have been occasions when we've found the lists to be inaccurate and it's always possible some work may still be continuing.
That said, assuming the work is complete, one thing that is never a good idea is to retune when you have no signal or badly pixellated picture as it will often just clear the correct tuning that you had, and you can end up tuned to a much weaker signal from another transmitter.
Check in your TV's Tuning Section that you are correctly tuned to the UHF channels for Sudbury -
The 6 main multiplexes are on UHF channels C44, C41, C47, C29, C31, C37 that's in multiplex order -
PSBs1/BBCA, PSB2/D3&4, PSB3/BBCB HD, COM4/SDN, COM5/ArqA, COM6/ArqB
There is a relay transmitter close by (although vertical polarisation) and you could have got mistuned to that for any of the PSB muxes.
You should normally get good signals from Sudbury, but if your loft aerial is still pointing through a party wall that won't be helping matters.
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Saturday, 13 November 2021
A
aytchgee3:53 PM
Hi Chris.
Many many thanks for your response. Much appreciated.
I made sure when I did retunings over the past month that they were after midnight when as many of the channels I can normally access would be available, as well as "adding them" as opposed to replacing them.
As a matter of interest - channel searches done during the time when I can't get most of my usual channels (all ITV + others on Freeview) only find around 30 - 40 (inc radio) yet when things currently "normalise" after 11 pm each evening, I find over a 100, although owing to my aerial inefficiency, many are never available to me anyway.
One odd thing I've always noticed - the BBC channels (which never seem to suffer from this current reception problem) have a time delay of around 20 seconds when selected before I am able to then flick over to another channel, unlike all the other freeview channels where there is no time lapse when flitting from channel to channel.
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C
Chris.SE9:46 PM
aytchgee:
Hmm. This sounds a bit odd.
I'm not sure that "adding" channels rather than "replacing" is the best option. If you happen to have got/be getting signals from more than one transmitter (several even) then "duplicates" for want of a better way of saying it, may be put in the 800 LCN range - and that might be some/many from Sudbury if the "correct" LCNs are already occupied by channels from another transmitter which may or may not be any longer receivable which could have been weather dependent!
Also having to try tuning late (after 11pm) could also be fraught with problems as certain types of maintenance work may be carried out over night and so not all muxes or channels may be available.
To start off, I'd suggest clearing all current tuning by unplugging the aerial and carrying out a full automatic retune. As no channels should be found, this should clear everything.
Plug the aerial back in and then carry out a MANUALtune of Sudbury's UHF channels as I listed in the previous post.
If for some reason you don't get anything on some of those channels, I'd try a manual tune on them at a different time - just in case there is some unpublished work going on OR the possibility of some sort of external interference.
Once correctly tuned to those UHF channels do NOT retune again. IF some programmes (LCNs) only appear to be watchable at certain time of day, make a note of which they are and when this is occurring and we'll have to consider the possibility of some sort of interference and how to investigate depending on the circumstances.
(As an aside, did you ever get a UHF/VHF diplexer for your aerials?).
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Thursday, 18 November 2021
A
Aytchgee5:09 PM
Hi Chris.
Waited a couple of days to see if there would be any improvement but alas no.
I cleared all the channels as you suggested by doing a factory reset and then re scanned. However I couldn't use your ref "C" numbers as my ageing set top freeview box only comes up with "K" number options.
Again yesterday ITV and the other problem channels all packed up around teatime - this time at 6.55p.m!! They had all returned by around 11p.m as usual.
(I didn't get round to getting a UHF/VHF diplexer for my aerials as my hifi radio signal is perfect and much less of a priority than tv)
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A
aytchgee5:22 PM
(I didn't get round to getting a UHF/VHF diplexer for my aerials as my hifi radio signal is perfect and much MORE of a priority than tv) Sorry - brain error!!
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Friday, 19 November 2021
C
Chris.SE1:00 AM
Aytchgee:
Hi. I'm a bit baffled as to what your Freeview box "K" numbers are - not one in my experience, unless of course you mean kHz!
The "C" before the UHF channel number simply means "UHF channel". The only reason it is typed before the UHF number on THIS forum, is because if you hover over it, it will give you the channel frequency in MHz.
So go back to that earlier post and hover over each of those that I've listed, for kHz just put three 0s on the end!
My suspicion is that if you are allowing your box just to scan up through the frequencies (starting at 474000kHz) then there is a good chance that you may well be tuning to some/all of the PSB multiplexes from the Bramford relay transmitter and these will be weaker and less reliable as you aerial is set up for Sudbury.
If you box doesn't allow to scan specific frequencies one by one (manual tuning) then the "trick" here is if you can see the frequency that it's scanning at any one time, then leave the aerial unplugged until it's just gone passed 522000kHz and plug it in quickly as the first frequency you want is 538000kHz. Thereafter it can finish by itself.
I'll come back with another post about diplexers.
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A
aytch2:20 AM
When I get "5" I'll check out and write down what numbers etc come up on the screen to try to clarify things. (The box does allow for manual tuning)
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Friday, 3 December 2021
A
Aytch1:02 PM
Hi. Sorry for the delay.
Right - in Manual tuning mode the K numbers begin at K21 - 474 MhZ and go up numerically to K68 - 850 MhZ.
Thus I reckon from your previous response I need to start on "K29" as this is 538MhZ then click and scan upwards on each K number till I get to K68 (850MhZ).
Will try this and let you know how I get on!!
Many thanks for your continued guidance.
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C
Chris.SE10:36 PM
Aytch:
No problem with the delay. Ah, I'm wondering if you have your set's country code set to UK English with "K" (for Kanal maybe) but no matter as long as it tunes.
Yes K29 is the lowest at Sudbury, but you don't need to tune each K all the way to K68 (it's also not a good idea you may incorrectly tune to weak signals from the wrong transmitter), only tune those I listed. In any case there's nothing at Sudbury above C47.
If it's proper manual tuning, you should be able to tune each one in any order.
A reminder of what they are -
The 6 main multiplexes are on UHF channels C44, C41, C47, C29, C31, C37 that's in multiplex order -
PSBs1/BBCA, PSB2/D3&4, PSB3/BBCB HD, COM4/SDN, COM5/ArqA, COM6/ArqB
and in your case it's K instead of C.
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Thursday, 16 December 2021
A
Aytch2:54 PM
Hi! Just a quicky - have just got round to adding just the 6 main multiplexes today so will see how I get on with them and report back in a couple of days!!
Aytch
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