Can someone in the know explain why my digital terrestrial tv goes rubbish on a sunday night from around 6pm till now? its not constant but drops out for up to 10mins, only on sundays, I've three recievers and they all do the same. I really cant work it out and the only possible source is a guy down the road who clearly has a pretty hefty am radio judging from the arial on his roof!

Are you in cheshire?, my signal is often variable at the weekends/evenings, think it is all to do with the digital upgrade and work on the Winterhill transmitter.

Bruk, yes i am!! thank god for that, I was going to start looking at RF sheilding, ferrite loops all shorts of stuff which i knew had nowt to do with it!. cheers i'll leave it for now

we get our signal from winter hill and it's fine on sunday night. IME, the guys work mostly on the transmitter during the week.When I ride up there at weekend they're rarely about. It's a mad job they've got, getting lifted up to a skinny pole on top of a hill in a little cable car.

They're sitting there having a fag with their feet dangling over the edge like they've not got a care in the world.

Its not the Winter Hill transmitter that's at fault it's that bloody Welsh one @ Moel y Parc. Why the F-ing hell do I want to watch Eisteddfods all the time, I live in England and would like BBC 1 North West to be Channel 1 not 799 👿

Going to be interesting when they switch off the analogue and boost the digital signal, who will win?

I have friends who live 1/4 mile away and the only English signal they can get is Central!! With news about Birmingham FFS.
I once spoke to a Welsh taxi driver from the Welsh side of the Dee who said he got BBC NW & Granada just fine as he was below the line from that sodding transmitter @ Moel y Parc. His comment was "Thank god I don't have to watch all that Welsh propaganda on the TV" 🙁

Who will win? The one you point your antenna at, most likely. I had a choice of 2 transmitters at my previous place, unfortunately each one gave poor signals on different channels, so we installed two antenna and multiplexed the signals, problem solved! Now it's on digital the winter hill signal is more than strong enough to cause no problems.

coffeeking
Who will win? The one you point your antenna at, most likely

You would think so! But mine is pointing directly at Winter Hill (even had it checked when we first got digital) its also a top end high gain powered unit on a 3 meter pole, yet the Welsh channels dominate 👿

That's pretty odd, unless you have a reflection from a nearby building/metal object, or the welsh one is directly behind you. The way the antenna work is extremely directional, by definition – you shouldnt have any significant overlap – apart from anything the welsh one shouldnt, IIRC, be broadcasting on the same channel (digitals come over the analogue channels) as the winter hill one so they shouldn't overlap in any way (a bit like colouring countries on a map, next-door ones shouldnt be the same "colour"?

mine does the same from sutton coldfield on weekends.. all my weekend recordings are all blocks rubbish.

Mr Overshoot is in a location that's got a cracking line of sight onto Moel y Parc, living the other side of the river from him on the Welsh side I get a cracking signal from Winter Hill, which I'm happy with as a lot of the Welsh channels have quite a south bias to them.

coffeeking – Member
That's pretty odd, unless you have a reflection from a nearby building/metal object, or the welsh one is directly behind you. The way the antenna work is extremely directional, by definition – you shouldnt have any significant overlap – apart from anything the welsh one shouldnt, IIRC, be broadcasting on the same channel (digitals come over the analogue channels) as the winter hill one so they shouldn't overlap in any way (a bit like colouring countries on a map, next-door ones shouldnt be the same "colour"?

That was how I understood it but its always been a problem even before digital, I moved up here in 1996 and despite being 180 miles north of the event my "local" news was about the opening of the second Seven crossing 😡

You might be on to something with the welsh transmitter being 180deg from Winter Hill, I will check the maps!

The way the antenna work is extremely directional, by definition

'spose it depends what you mean by extremely directional, you're probably looking at a beamwidth of around 25-30º for a modern, wide band yagi antenna
Most good antennas have good rear rejection though but if it is a real problem you could try an 'X' array type antenna [often called BB grid]

IIRC, be broadcasting on the same channel (digitals come over the analogue channels) as the winter hill one so they shouldn't overlap in any way (a bit like colouring countries on a map, next-door ones shouldnt be the same "colour"?

Sort of but …….
They usually have adjacent transmitters at opposite polarity too

There's a distinct shortage of available frequencies, ch5 caused a bit of a headache in places & with new frequencies needed for the digital multplexes, things are a bit tight
This means that some adjacent [same polarity] transmitters broadcasting only 1 band IV or V channel apart
That may well leave some systems with interference from 3rd order intermodulation
i.e the product of 3 transmitted frequencies is equal to another wanted frequency causing interference.

I have an "X" array antenna! What gets me is I'm getting all the ruddy welsh channels assigning the low numbers 1,2,3,4(which is S4C) and the NW ones are 799,800,801,802 etc, yet my ariel points perfectly at Winter hill

I suspect by now your getting the impression this annoys me somewhat 😕

Just found this on the Digital UK site

"Duplicate channels are sometimes placed into the 800's when a viewer is in an area where the receiver picks up reception from more than one transmitter. Often the stronger signal is used and the channels from the weaker signal are placed in the 800's. When your TV or digital box is re-tuned, it will chose to put one of the services into the traditional slot near the top of the EPG. The other services will be shown at the bottom of the list of channels."

Can't you just re-assign them?

Actually – why not do a manual installation?

Winter Hill digital muxes are 56, 66, 68, 67, 60 & 63

I know people who lived in areas where their tv or internet would go down at 7pm every night.

Turned out it was a really old tv in the street that was causing the radiation prob.

True story while workng for BT yrs ago.

Glad uplink is here to put more meat into the antenna sandwich! Not my best field! Out antennas (one also picking up winter hill) are just noise at about 5-10 degrees from perfect aim.

I think I'd try the manual install and re-arrange those channels instead.

Have you tried wrapping your telly in tin foil?