Sandy Heath Outages

Has anyone else been getting odd complete loss of signal from Sandy
Heath? Happened again today at 1239 during Chelsea flower show. Normal
signal is 100 and Quality is 100, but we have had three or four
complete losses for around 20-30 seconds over the last couple of
weeks. The signal returns without any intervention.

John

On Friday, May 25th, 2012, at 04:47:33h -0700, JohnW asked:

Has anyone else been getting odd complete loss of signal from Sandy
Heath? Happened again today at 1239 during Chelsea flower show.

You do know about the tropospheric ducting around 1300h BST today?

On 25 May, 16:01, J G Miller wrote:
On Friday, May 25th, 2012, at 04:47:33h -0700, JohnW asked:

Has anyone else been getting odd complete loss of signal from Sandy
Heath? Happened again today at 1239 during Chelsea flower show.

You do know about the tropospheric ducting around 1300h BST today?

No, but I do now thanks. But I don't think that is the problem as it
had been happening before the recent high pressure. The outage is
instant and there is no pixellation before or after the outage.

On Friday, May 25th, 2012, at 12:20:06h -0700, John W explained:

No, but I do now thanks. But I don't think that is the problem as it
had been happening before the recent high pressure.

Okay, it was just a thought.

The outage is instant and there is no pixellation before or after the outage.

I know this is a trite response, but have you asked your neighbors if they
are experiencing similar? I would expect *their* answer to be no, and this
would add evidence to the problem being with your equipment.

If the signal cuts out completely and then comes back again it could be
due to a bad electrical contact in your downlead cable. Is the cable in
good condition and is it secure and not flapping about in the breeze
and are the ends well secured to the antenna and to the plug connected
to the TV?

Are you using any form of amplifier, masthead or distribution?

"JohnW" wrote in message
...
Has anyone else been getting odd complete loss of signal from Sandy
Heath? Happened again today at 1239 during Chelsea flower show. Normal
signal is 100 and Quality is 100, but we have had three or four
complete losses for around 20-30 seconds over the last couple of
weeks. The signal returns without any intervention.

John

The last 2 weeks on Wednesday evenings, once during each episode of Lewis,
the signal from Sandy Heath disappeared for what felt like about 20 seconds
and then came back. Watching from Milton Keynes, the signal is normally
pretty strong; I've had to put a 10dB attenuator in the aerial lead to
prevent it occasionally overtopping the 100% on our Panasonic recorder
(something which gives us a freeze-up and an error message; I'm told that's
a well-known problem with that model). On both occasions I checked when it
had come back and it was showing a normal-strength high-quality signal.

Allan

On 27 May, 20:57, "Allan" wrote:
"JohnW" wrote in message

...

Has anyone else been getting odd complete loss of signal from Sandy
Heath? Happened again today at 1239 during Chelsea flower show. Normal
signal is 100 and Quality is 100, but we have had three or four
complete losses for around 20-30 seconds over the last couple of
weeks. The signal returns without any intervention.

John

The last 2 weeks on Wednesday evenings, once during each episode of Lewis,
the signal from Sandy Heath disappeared for what felt like about 20 seconds
and then came back. Watching from Milton Keynes, the signal is normally
pretty strong; I've had to put a 10dB attenuator in the aerial lead to
prevent it occasionally overtopping the 100% on our Panasonic recorder
(something which gives us a freeze-up and an error message; I'm told that's
a well-known problem with that model). On both occasions I checked when it
had come back and it was showing a normal-strength high-quality signal.

Allan

Yep thats the kiddy, I remember one of the Lewis ones. It does seem to
be poor
monitoring at Sandy, for instance the sound level of the announcements
just before
8 o'clock are always at a considerably higher level than the normal
transmission.

Thanks

John

On 28/05/2012 18:29, JohnW wrote:
It does seem to
be poor
monitoring at Sandy, for instance the sound level of the announcements
just before
8 o'clock are always at a considerably higher level than the normal
transmission.

There's no monitoring at Sandy. The entire UK network is monitored
remotely at Emley Moor in Yorkshire.

As for audio levels (as far as DTT is concerned) , that's a two level
function, and nothing to do with anything at the transmitter sites.

Firstly, the channels and muxes are encoded centrally, all that is
delivered to the transmitter sites is a packaged up transport stream for
each mux. Secondly any level differences between programmes on a
particular channel, can only be due to a lack of proper control at that
channel's playout centre.

Which channel is this observed audio fault on ?

--
Mark
Please replace invalid and invalid with gmx and net to reply.

www.paras.org.uk

On 29 May, 07:33, Mark Carver wrote:

Firstly, the channels and muxes are encoded centrally, all that is
delivered to the transmitter sites is a packaged up transport stream for
each mux. Secondly any level differences between programmes on a
particular channel, can only be due to a lack of proper control at that
channel's playout centre.

Which channel is this observed audio fault on ?

--
Mark

www.paras.org.uk

It is on BBC1

John