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All posts by Gordon Elliott

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


Hello, I would appreciate it if you could give me some advice please.

I live in Snettisham in North Norfolk and my aerial is a grade 3 ( I beleive ) and is directed towards The Waltham transmitter.

However, I find the ITV1 transmitter quality is quite often very poor ( and also the other channels ( Programs ) on the same Mux ).

Is there any mileage in redirecting my aerial towards Tacolneston or Sandy and also perhaps upgrading it to grade 2 or 1?

Thanks for your attention.

Gordon Elliott

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GB flag

Hello again,

Sorry , a correction to my last query.

I actually have a grade 2 aerial

Regards

Gordon Elliott

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Many thanks Dave Lindsay for the reply.

I can actually receive Belmont, but I do rather like to get the Regional ITV ( Anglia ) which is the culprit giving me problems.(Unbelievable really, I live in East Anglia but cannot get reliable reception from it. )

Interesting about the Kings Lynn transmitter as Sandringhan is only 3 miles down the road, but all of the rooftop aerials in this vicinity point towards Waltham (????). I shall have to investigate further.

So, to clarify matters for me, if I have two Freeview aerials, one for Kings Lynn and one for Belmont, I can connect these two together via a diplexer after the masthead amplifiers. I could then receive PSB from Tacolneston and COMs from Belmont with a better degree of reliability than at present?

Is there any mileage in just upgrading my present aerial? It is just the quality of the signal that is poor.

Best regards

Gordon Elliott

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Sorry, but can someone tell me why I cannot see posts later than 18th May 2012.

I actually have posted a couple of days ago and had a response, but now I cannot find them anywhere. Is it because I have cleared my browser cache?

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Freeview reception - all about aerials | Installing
Sunday 20 January 2013 1:02PM
King's Lynn

Dear Dave Langley,

Many many thanks for your very detailed reply. It took me some time to work through it all so that I could properly understand it.

The information you gave me to determine which transmitter I was receiving ITV1 on was exceedingly helpful.

It would appear that my ITV1 Anglia signal ( thats what the signal strengh/quality indicator calls it ) is channel 46 ( Kings Lynn ) but I have drawn a straight line using google earth using the direction my aerial is pinting towards and it is definitely pointing towards Waltham. Signal strength is 10, quality about 7 - 8 for ITV1 and no surprise after all.

If I look at another ITV1 channel that the TV autotuner picked up, I can see that it has a signal strength of 10 quality 10 and is channel 54 from Waltham.

My confusion arose because I have a Panasonic TV, which, after it has done a channel scan, then gives me the option of choosing which area I am in.
Of course I say "Anglia" and it sorts the station numbering for Anglia. However, it appears to only selects BBC1 and ITV1 for Anglia.
On looking at each station network name as I check each channel manually, Only BBC1 and ITV1 are on Anglia and everything else in on East Midlands network.

My "as the crow flies" distance from Snettisham to Belmont is not much different to Waltham so it would probably be beneficial to redirect towards Belmont
for the COMS signals ( because sometimes some of the COMS channels are weak also ) and add another aerial directed towards King's Lynn for the PSB channels.
I notice that the polarisation from King's Lynn is vertical as opposed to Belmont which is Horizontal. Would I need a different type of aerial for King's Lynn?

My neighbour opposite actually has a class 1 aerial pointing towards Belmont, ( just the one aerial ) which probably indicates something, so I will have to ask him.

However, if I decide to add another aerial for King's Lynn, could I not use wideband diplexers to join the 2 aerial signals together?

Best regards

Gordon Elliott

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Freeview reception - all about aerials | Installing
Monday 21 January 2013 11:45AM
King's Lynn

Dear Dave Lindsay

Many thanks for your replies.

It will take me some time to get my head around that lot, so it may be a day or so before I reply.

Again, many thanks for pointing out all the pitfalls. It is obviously not straight forward and I need to give it some deep thought.

Best regards

Gordon Elliott

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Freeview reception - all about aerials | Installing
Monday 21 January 2013 4:13PM
King's Lynn

Dear Dave Langley.

OK, I have managed to get my head around that lot by mapping out on a spreadsheet the Waltham and KL Channels and their corresponding broadcast frequencies.

It would appear that it is a question of whether just using a splitter acting as a combiner would give just the discrete sum of the 2 aerials or whether there would be some interference injected due to reflections and carrier interactions.

As far as I can make out, the two transmitters in question do not broadcast and channels which use duplicate frequencies, therefore in theory one should just be able to combine them. If that does not work then there is always the option to insert passband diplexers as you suggested, which I am fairly certain would have the desired effect.

As to the future proofing, I am now 73 years old (male ) and I will probably not be around to worry about any of it for much longer, but I like to keep my brain active.

I used be an electronics service engineer, but in a totally different subject field and my TV transmitter knowledge is somewhat limited. If I can get someone to point me in the right direction however, such as you have, then I can usually get to the end product.

Once again, many many thanks for your detailed assistance. I will let you know sometime in the future what the outcome was.

Best regards

Gordon Elliott

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Freeview reception - all about aerials | Installing
Tuesday 22 January 2013 9:15AM
King's Lynn

Dear Dave Lindsay

Further to my post of yesterday and after further thought, I see now what you meant about perhaps the KL signal being able to drown out the Belmont/Waltham transmitter(s) because in theory two aerials would be receiving the signals from all three transmitters to some extent.

However, with the KL Tx being vertically polarised I would hope that the pickup on that aerial from Waltham/Belmont Txs would be absolutely minimal.

Therefore I think that just using as combiner would probably stand a good chance of working.

Best regards

Gordon Elliott

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Full technical details of Freeview
Thursday 30 May 2013 8:47AM
King's Lynn

Hi,

When I enter my postcode which is North Norfolk, near Hunstanton, the map shows my Transmitter as being in Brighton. Is there something not quite right there?

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