All posts by Alex
Below are all of Alex's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
As a general rule, the power will only be reduced if people are working on the mast. It stops them from being cooked. DSO preparation work will occur sporadically (weather dependant) either at the base or on the mast until April 6th.
If you're having problems only with BBC 1 and 2 (and not other channels on that Mux) on Freeview this would suggest you need to reset your box (unplug/replug at the wall) - or as Mike points out, you could try a manual retune.
The mux on Ch68 is going out at 1000 watts, the same mux on the second beam is on ch45 and is 2000 watts. The higher power beam is 29 metres lower on the mast, however...
Mike, I presume you know the whole story about Oxford, i.e. including the part about the rocket?
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wayne: I don't think you say whether or not you have a loft aerial, but if you do, that certainly won't help!
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High atmospheric pressure forecast to continue until Wednesday across England, which may not help (less in Wales / Scotland / NI but services may still be affected) - coastal areas will be particularly bad.
Try a manual retune, use online streaming services or just wait it out.
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This transmitter was off air due to power cuts at the site. It's back on air now.
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Digital signals should never be split... and really shouldn't be amplified either. You're just adding noise and amplifying interference from other sources. In the ideal world, you should really have one clean aerial feed per TV... or get Freesat.
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Hate to be a pain, but it will be off again this week (for drum painting) and then on reduced power for another week or two for some other engineering work.
It's annoying (I live in Merstham), but we (the BBC) can't avoid it I'm afraid.
During outage times, you should use on-demand services instead (BBC iPlayer, etc)
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Hi all, I am both a Mersthamite and a BBC Reception Advice chap - the maintenance work is unavoidable and affects all services (not just BBC) and there's more to come, particularly if bad weather persists. Also, timing is not decided by the broadcasters, but by the mast owners.
The whole point of the Reigate mast is to serve those of us in the area who can't receive signals from Crystal Palace, which thanks to the North Downs, is most homes.
Mast maintenance is a fact of life, has been throughout the decades of analogue and recent migration towards digital, and people will be inconvenienced by some work at transmitters... you could always grab a book during these outages and periods of reduced power :)
The only alternative is to watch on line, on demand - the BBC for example streams everything (TV and Radio) live on BBC iPlayer.
You can also get real-time transmitter updates (or near as possible) using the postcode checker - BBC - Help receiving TV and radio
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Oh and painting will be delayed when it rains... so if it's raining now (as it is in W12) then the guys up the mast will have to wait - which is, i suspect, why power has returned.
The plan was 3 lots of 6 hours - so if you count the outages, you will eventually get to 18 hours in total... but work can only be done during daylight in good weather (going up masts in bad weather is quite dangerous, even small ones)
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Page 2
Wednesday 23 February 2011 12:25PM
Sorry, I've just been told that the helicopter due to drop this mast in place was unable to take off yesterday due to fog. Not sure when this will be rescheduled - but I'll see if I can find out :)