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All posts by Francis Byrne

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


Was there any problems with Freeview Limavady again this evening? Poor reception across all Muxes, including BBC1. Signal normally 70%, now 50%. The Mux with Pop is not coming in at all this afternoon.

Thanks in advance!

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Thanks for your reply. Hopefully so it is just temporary! I just had a new aerial put up a few weeks ago (a K channel band with 5G filtering). It was working fine at the time with a slight improvement on the weakest channels (such as the one Pop is on, ch 206) but over the last week, it has been dreadful. BBC1 has improved again in signal strength, slightly (60-65a%) but Ch4+1, Challenge are very poor now. Could be temporarily linked to the poor weather .. might have to contact my aerial man again to check.

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I don't know what works were done in Limavady over the past several weeks but I had been hoping that the reception would improve afterwards. Now .. I can only get the BBC mux without breakup. Even the Channel4 mux is unwatchable, despite it being the "same" signal strength. All other muxes are breakup up to the point of being unwatchable... Looks like either the signal was shielded more and more or the signal had neen turned down post-works...

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Hi Steven,

Thanks for your reply. Yes, the reception did improve at the weekend but last night, Channel 4 was unwatchable again. I didn't see any further work mentioned in the mast, so am fearing the worst on what tuning has been done on the signal... I just had my aerial tested in August by a local TV aerial man, so I guess I might just have to rely on the nearer Freeview lite transmitter at some point soon.

What really gets me is that the signal used to be perfect back pre switchover - the 800w of power was enough for here .. but the boosted 10kW (COM) and 20kW (PSB) are hard to tune in. Pop (channel) and those on that mux have only occasionally been strong enough over the last 2 years or so.

Thanks again for your reply - the ukfree.tv website is a regular visit for me!

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Hi Chris,

Thanks for your reply. Do you know if there are any weather conditions that might be affecting reception at the moment? Even BBC is breaking up for me today .. and it's the only mux even partially coming in.

Thanks and regards
..Francis


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Hi Chris, thanks for your reply from a few weeks ago. I finally had a chance to go up into the attic to try a few things out! I finally have reception on all muxes (with a small caveat) and it turned out to be a combination of several different issues.

I found that when I connected just my upstairs TV directly to the aerial, I got *all* channels in! This didn't happen a few months back but I had a weaker aerial up at that point, so hadn't initially thought of trying that again. I next found out, through trial and error, that the new TV distribution box I bought was faulty. I got this exchanged and initially, still very bad channel breakup on all apart from the Irish muxes. In the meantime, I had also bought a 700MHz "5G"-filter from Screwfix, so I thought .. let's give this a shot to see if it makes any difference. I plug it into the aerial input of the distribution box .. and everything came in again! So, in the end, it looks like it was a combination of the faulty box and being (apparently) too near a 700MHz mast (many of which are being used for 4G at the moment) that was preventing me get a stable picture .. and transmitter works in the middle of it all, didn't help!

I now have the muxes on both the upstairs and downstairs TV, including the HD channels on ch 47. The caveat? The mux with "Pop" (on ch 46) comes and goes as it is substantially weaker than any of the others. Overall, that's not a big deal as the kids can watch it on satellite downstairs and in the morning times, if they're upstairs, it works. I'm delighted to finally get Channel 4 HD in at last (without having to resort to non-Freesat channel mode on a separate satellite box).

Thank you for all of your tips and ideas to try out! TBH if it wasn't for your projected coverage maps and channel listings, I'd probably have given up a long time ago as not being viable.

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