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All posts by chris m

Below are all of chris m's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.

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Aerial groups - new feature | Transmitters
Monday 14 February 2011 3:17PM
Sheffield

Long time since I last posted on here. Back in March 2009 my problem (on the west side of Cambridge) was the MuxB/C67 signal from Sandy Heath, which was dreadful. Now, with a month or 2 to go until Sandy Heath cutover, C67 is the best and most reliable, and Mux 1/C42 and MuxC/C40 are the poorest, on a consistent basis; seems to me they've rearranged the transmitter in some way over the last year and a half. Ideas? Anyway, my real question was:- do I need to know about the +/- offset of some Muxes, as there doesn't seem to be any fine-tuning available on any freeview box I've ever owned?

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I excitedly retuned my TV this morning, and lo and behold BBC1/2/3 now have a nice strong reliable signal. Just one little thing - the data at the top of this page now lists BBC4 and the radio stations as being on both PSB1/C27 and MuxB/C67 (where they were before). And I definitely saw them coming up on C67 when tuning in. Is there another step here?

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In West Cambridge; did the full retune from scratch - ArqB (COM6), which was on C46, had vanished and not appeared anywhere else. So no Film4 - and presumably no Sky Sports either. Where should ArqB be, right now?

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KMJ,Derby: Thanks for that. I did notice that C67 was still there with a good signal, but no stations found. Mind you, this was all at 7 o'clock this morning - maybe they were hadn't finished switching over...

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I'm on the west side of cambridge; sandy heath transmitter is through a gap between the blocks of executive apartments over the road; aerial is in the loft with an amplifier. What I'd like to hear some opinions on is why the ITV PSB2 mux (C24) is rock-solid with a constant zero bit error rate and 2dB better than the BBC PSB1 mux (C27) which, while registering 100% signal quality, definitely is showing some bit errors, unless they are still fiddling with signal strength and direction at the transmitter?

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Oh, I forgot to say, I tried turning the amplifier down and it just reduced the strength and quality...

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Briantist: Yes, I'd forgotten to try that. But it didn't work; made things worse, as did an attenutator. At all times, though, PSB1 was consistently weaker and suffering higher bit errors than PSB2. That was the bit I thought was interesting.

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Sandy Heath (Central Bedfordshire, England) Full Freeview trans
Thursday 15 September 2011 7:44AM
Cambridge

MIke Dimmick/Brian, can you summarise then when the ArqA, ArqB and SDN muxes will go to full power? Bit confused now.

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Brian - so even from 27th June 2012, full power is not a given? That's stretching the meaning of 'for a period' a bit ;-)

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Sandy Heath (Central Bedfordshire, England) Full Freeview trans
Thursday 15 September 2011 4:02PM
Cambridge

Mike Dimmick, I'm in awe of your knowledge of things I know nothing of, like beam angles, fairly deep nulls and the whole concept of transmitters broadcasting asymmetrically. Given that I'm due East, more or less, of the transmitter, do you think the southerly restriction would apply here in Cambridge?

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