Full Freeview on the Sudbury (Suffolk, England) transmitter
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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, 27 July 2012
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Nick6:52 PM
Woodbridge
Before you ask me if there are any trees in the way, there are, in the neighbour's garden, directly in line with.....Dover.
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Nick's: mapN's Freeview map terrainN's terrain plot wavesN's frequency data N's Freeview Detailed Coverage
J
jb389:14 PM
Nick: In reply to your experiments with home made aerials, if No2 aerial received all but Ch60 from Sudbury, then whilst the box was still sitting on Sudbury muxes you turned the aerial around 90 degrees towards Tacolneston and by carrying out that action you then picked up Ch60 thereby making a full compliment of Sudbury channels, then it can only be for one of two reasons.
(1) that Sudbury's signal is being strongly reflected towards you from some large distant object and that is why you are receiving that station when the aerial isn't pointing towards it, or (2) that the directors on the aerial are acting like restrictors and are partially blocking the signal from reaching the active element, "but" with the element of restriction referred to being cleared when the aerial is turned sideways thereby allowing the signal direct access to the active element, the whole point about directors being that they "have" to be precisely aligned "exactly" facing the direction of the signal or they "will" act as partial blockers, this being why I never advocate high gain aerials being used in any situation unless its not too far off line of sight, and also why a Log aerial (any Log but short ones best) coupled with an amplifier of about 12 / 15db or so can receive far more consistent (and reliable) signals over a large piece of metal work.
What I suggest you do though is to leave your No1 aerial set up in operation and do not alter anything, just leaving it running like that to see how long the reception of all muxes holds out for before conditions cause changes to take place.
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Saturday, 28 July 2012
J
jb381:05 PM
Nick: Just a little addition, Re: > I then put aerial (1) back, pointed the same way, and got nothing <, "if" by that you are meaning that when you reconnected No1 aerial into the box again and pointed it in the same direction as was done with the No 2 aerial whereby it received all muxes from Sudbury on by doing this you got nothing, then that would suggest that No1 aerial "is" acting correctly, and that the the second possible reason (re: directors) could be responsible for this strange effect occurring on No 2 aerial, unless that is there was a coax braiding connection problem on the No2 aerial.
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Sunday, 29 July 2012
N
Nick9:14 PM
Woodbridge
Thank you gentlemen. I finally bit the bullet, got on the roof and put up the tribeam. It got a good signal on all muxes, facing the right way, 95 sig strength and at least 80 quality, although both wavered a bit.
I have resolved to leave it as it is, despite today c60 pixellating with sig quality down as low as 30 at times, oh dear, but think this is the best I am going to get. c60 does not like me, c58 has no such reservations!
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Nick's: mapN's Freeview map terrainN's terrain plot wavesN's frequency data N's Freeview Detailed Coverage
N
Nick9:23 PM
Woodbridge
I only have a small problem now for you kindly to resolve. It insists on picking up the ITV 1 mux a second time on c59. I guess it must be Tac. I do not want this as I might find it pixellating because on wrong xmitter, even though it has already logged the Sudbury version.
When I retune the box, I withhold the aerial till I guess I am near c41 to stop it catching the Aldeburgh xmitter. But I cannot withhold the aerial between 58 and 60!
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Nick's: mapN's Freeview map terrainN's terrain plot wavesN's frequency data N's Freeview Detailed Coverage
Monday, 30 July 2012
Nick: If your box has manual tuning, then the easy answer is to unplug the aerial so as to miss out C59. Then manually add the missing ones, 58, 60 and possibly 56. If it doesn't, then if you have another aerial that picks up all Sudbury's channels such as that on your shed then take the box there and tune it in.
I don't quite understand. If aerial 1 works, then why not install it on your roof to provide you with the full complement of channels in your house? If this is so, then it would suggest that it is possible to pick them all up, although as jb38 suggests, it might be worth trying it over a period of time to see if they all hold.
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N
Nick12:54 PM
Woodbridge
Thanks Dave.
I tried yesterday to put in the whole lot manually, having first deleted, but for some reason got all sorts of odd channels on 1,2, 3, and then BBC 1 etc on the wrong channels.
The shed aerial is on Dover.
I am talking about two different locations. I have been doing my tests at Holleley, which is better situated than Aldeburgh where I installed the tribeam.
Aerial one worked at Hollesley, but would have struggled at Aldeburgh. It is difficult to describe. Imagine a group c/d aerial, old fashioned 18, no balun. The dipole, folded, was doctored so that the bottom half inch widened out into group b. Then remove the two directors nearest the dipole and raise them an inch and replace. Then, an inch below the boom, put in a 7 inch director, then a six and a half, so there are two sets of directors initially, then they merge to take up the remaining 14 which are all 6 ins. Crafty eh?
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Nick's: mapN's Freeview map terrainN's terrain plot wavesN's frequency data N's Freeview Detailed Coverage
Thursday, 2 August 2012
N
Norm De Plume8:16 AM
Oh joy, I thought we were done with the retuning, but it looks like there's another retune on the way - Freeview channel numbers change on September 19th 2012 | ukfree.tv - 10 years of independent, free digital TV advice
Is this going to be the last one for a while or is there going to be a whole new tranche of retuning required (what about 4G for instance?)
At least I learned how to back up the other half's recording schedule on our Humax PVR some time ago as a retune deletes the list and it takes HOURS to put them all back manually. However, there must be a lot of other people who will be getting quite angry now.
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N
Nick6:25 PM
Woodbridge
Dave or JB,
I think one of you said the projection for channel 60 for me was not good. I do not understand why one channel should have a worse projection than the others from the same transmitter.
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Nick's: mapN's Freeview map terrainN's terrain plot wavesN's frequency data N's Freeview Detailed Coverage
J
jb3811:28 PM
Nick: I cant recall ever having said that nor do I see Dave Lindsay having mentioned it either, as although Ch60 was indeed the subject of discussion I certainly don't see the word "projection" as such having been mentioned.
However on the subject of one channel being received at a very low strength compared to an adjacent channel booming in even although the ERP's of both transmitters are the same, this is just one of these things that can happen with multi-element radiator / multi-channel radiation sources even although they are all from the same mast, as no matter how precise the planning might have been RF signals do not by any means always conform to what's expected (or predicted) and can stray quite considerably from it, likewise there is always an element of pot luck involved should they all be received at roughly similar strengths to each other.
The only clue as to whether this situation may, or may not be applying cases where a signal is being received at a significantly lower level than another that's only one or two channels away, is for tests to be carried out at evenly spaced distances from the mast but on exactly the same angle from it, and if at one of these intermediate distances the channel that's weak at a distance is found to be slighter stronger than the one that was higher at the distance, then that points to a non conformity in the vertical radiation angle and which very little can be done about at the receiving end.
I only mention this for information purposes.
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