All posts by david
Below are all of david's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
Hi and welcome to Suffolk :)
You are served from Tacolneston near Norwich so your aerial should be pointing pretty much directly North.
We are in Wickham Skeith and can receive ALL Freeview TV & radio stations Darius,
Yep, Aerial needs to go outside on the roof....for every approx 6 ft increase in height your signal will nearly double....likewise increase by moving it outside.....of course you could hang on until November when the Tacolneston changeover happens and they wind the wick up on the transmitter power......you'll probably be able to receive it with a bit of wire then ! :) Question on aerial boosters post switch over
Served from Tacolneston (just !) I have a Televes DAT45 with MRD amplifier built in which feeds into a 4 way distribution amplifier.
F/V signal strength is around 75% and (according to the TV & F/V boxes) 100% error free, indeed we can pick up all the available channels whereas prior to F/V we couldn't really get a good channel 5 pic at all.
I am assuming that post switchover I will have to reduce the gain of the distribution amp or fit an attenuator on the Televes aerial output so a) what is the recommended procedure and b) what happens if I don't ?
On analog TV I recall that the picture would have black bars if the signal was to strong.
thanks Anyone know if Tacolneston is transmitting freeview HD at the moment....reason I ask is that we for the last few weeks we can pick up several f/v HD channels......if not then we must be picking them up from the recently DSO'd Sudbury TX .....which means from the back of the aerial !!!
Thanks Bob
Sunday 2 October 2011 8:12AM
1 day ago Brandon.....
Just a minor point but the new digital mast at Taccy is actually shorter....... mike smith
I stand corrected...having installed the fibre network at Sudbury a few years back I was there whilst the mast was being built and the guys on site explained the whys & wherefores about why the new mast was shorter (more powerful, digital etc.) so I assumed it would be the same at Tacolneston....but having read the info here
The BigTower Tacolneston Transmitter
it does indeed appear that the new mast IS higher .... hmmmm JM F....
I am astounded by your comment regarding the co-ax lead....read on....I have several so called "gold plated" so called "digital" co-ax fly leads (only cheapies but they worked, blue in colour) - had them for years with no problems at all until a few weeks ago when, after a re-tune the TV card in the PC flatly refused to find more than a handful of stations. My first thought was to swap the co-ax lead with the one from the TV (same type) but that also didn't work.....the other TV's in the house all worked OK with the "suspect" lead.......so assuming the TV card to be at fault I contacted Hauppauge who, despite my protestations that it was OK, immediately suspected the fly-lead (!!) so I made up a new one with double screened co-ax (that I had recently re-wired my whole installation with) and lo and behold ALL stations returned ! The old lead tests perfectly on DC with a meter (about 1 Ohm end to end and >999 MOhm insulation) so why doesn't it work with the PC card - and why, all of a sudden don't any of the others ?
This seems to reflect your comments re checking the fly lead (Jane Hore) so I can only assume that my problems are caused by lack of screening allowing interference to swamp the signal although to my knowledge nothing has changed !
Interested to hear your (or anyone else's comments as to why this might be and why only after the re-tune a couple of weeks ago). 
....con't...
interested to hear your (and anyone elses') comments as to why this should be and also why it has suddenly happened after the re-tune last week.
Needless to say I have now replaced all my fly leads with newly made up ones using the double screened co-ax....just to be safe ! Jim F...fair point....except that mine are all "straight" - I am well aware of the need not to bend co-ax :)
Still can't see why they should all "fail" only on the PC card and all of a sudden though - unless one or more of the frequencies changed but I can't see that really being the cause.
Another of lifes' mysteries I suppose.....still, after Wednesday we'll probably be cooking on RF - and we are (were) on the fringe area of Taccy ! I am trying to assist some friends who live in Jaywick, Essex (CO15 2RN) and after DSO last year lost some channels that they could previously receive OK.
They are definitely served from Sudbury (despite the freeview reception site that says Dover) and all neighbours aerials are pointing that way as well.
Based on my experience (from Tacolneston) I advised them to remove their aerial amplifier and re-scan etc. but it didn't help.
The "main 4" are OK - sorry but I don't know which ones they are struggling with so will try and find out & update this post.
thanks ......further investigation reveals that the channels they cannot get are all on ArqB mux - iu.e. the one that is running on lowest power so yes, they will have to wait until Dover goes DSO........still wondering why the freeview site seems to think they are served from Dover though.
Never thought I'd be saying I'm glad WE are served from Taccy :)
Thanks for the reply anyway 'ere, why does my original post say I am in Clacton ....I am just north of Stowmarket ! Just a thought but I did not receive an email alert for the answer from norm de plume even though the forum said I am set to receive email updates.....ideas ? Is there a problem with Mux A group.....we are getting good signal strength but mega high errors on all channels on MUX A, all others are OK.....noticed yesterday Dave L,
Thanks for the info - I did in fact see that but couldn't break it down to individual muxes and, as ALL the others are perfect assumed it wasn't the cause of our problems.......the situation remains the same today.
....ps....I didn't receive email notification of your reply, the "email me updates" box is ticked ..... OK so now there doesn't appear to be any ongoing transmitter work.....but we are still experiencing exactly the same level of errors on all channels on mux group A. All the others are OK with no reported errors *. Up until this started we could receive all channels with no errors *
* as reported by the TV and freeview indicators Norman,
Fly lead between wall & TV OK ?
I proved black was blue a while ago after purchasing some so called "digital" gold plated blue sheathing fly leads and "lost" several channels .....no, I didn't believe it either but replacement with leads made up with CTT100 cable made an immediate and somewhat un-believable improvement !
I think the problem was that rather than being faulty, the cheap leads allowed some interference in which was swamping the signal and causing the loss.
Might be worth a try.......I was so impressed I re-cabled the whole house in CTT100 cable, from aerial to outlet to TV and now don't get any interference or drop outs at all :) In response yo my post on 3rd June ....... the problem we are having affects the Com4 / SDN mux transmitting on channel 42 and NOT mux A....somewhere along the line I got confused with the numbering and referred to the pre DSO mux group ....apologies to all.
By LOWERING (!!) the aerial about 4ft I managed to get the signal strength on chan 42 up whilst the others dropped by a few uV so I now have a more even spread across the channels.
The tx is 208m high and 64m above sea level, my aerial is about 11m high and we are 40m above sea level so I have angled it up a few degrees which also helped slightly.
What I can't understand though is if they are all coming from the same transmitter and all leaving at 100KW then why are we receiving them at significantly different field strengths and why did lowering the aerial increase it ?
I have always believed that higher = better with a 3dB increase for every 6ft higher.
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following advice on another forum I have fitted a variable attenuator to reduce the signal strength on the other channels from 10/10 to around 9/10 which has resulted in chan 42 dropping to around 6/10 with an increase in errors and de-crease in quality to the poing where the picture breaks up.
So, what's the answer ????? I am seriously considering turning the aerial round 180 degrees and using Sudbury- gasp !! - as it's wideband it will work and when I briefly tried it I got a more even (but slightly lower) amplitide level across all the muxes.
I find this strange as the channels are similar and although Sudbury is further away I can amplify the signal if needed.
Couldn't do that until now as it wasn't full DSO.....but now it is.......:)
Briantist
Wednesday 4 July 2012 10:25PM
9 hours agoMark Fletcher: yes, it is c39+ ... not sure why it doesn't show it.
......'cos it's in Suffolk.....everything runs at a slow pace up here....and I love it :) BBC RADIO2 question
As of this afternoon pretty much all of North Suffolk (well, certainly between Ipswich, Bury & Diss) has been without BBC Radio 2 (89.7FM) ....I can just about pick up 89.1 London
What's going on ?
I note that Tacolneston shows "possible weak signal" but R3 & R4 are loud & clear. BBC RADIO2 question
As of this afternoon pretty much all of North Suffolk (well, certainly between Ipswich, Bury & Diss) has been without BBC Radio 2 (89.7FM) ....I can just about pick up 89.1 London
What's going on ?
I note that Tacolneston shows "possible weak signal" but R3 & R4 are loud & clear. Dave Lindsay
Tuesday 20 November 2012 9:58PM
16 hours agoDavidwFaulkner: Manningtree is 88.1. Peterborough is 90.1.
Thanks Dave, but I can't quite see the relevance to your answer.....fortunately 89.7 was back this morning.
Any idea why ?? ah, right :)...problem there is they are (respectively) very low power Tx and too far away.
What happened is the outstanding question though...... 
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