Mux 56 at Sudbury last night - anyone else have problems?

"Mark Carver" wrote in message
...

I've deliberately sat tuned into Astra 28.2E and waited for the sun to
move behind the birds. It was a total anti-climax. The signal strength and
quality meters on the Digibox didn't even flinch. You get a more dramatic
effect during monsoon rain.

The last time I saw solar outage was c1988 on a 1.8m dish. In those days the
sinals were right on the threshold with a dish of that size, so it didn't
take much to make the thing go tits up.

There did used to be this thing though, where in the early days of 13E (not
sure about that now) programmes were off the air sometimes because the solar
panels were screened from the sun by the earth.

Bill

I tend to think more of the acceptance from the sides and back than from
the
angles near where the aerial is pointing. Mind you, I had cause to align
one of these very short 'high gain' wideband aerials the other day and it
seemed so sloppy -- the front lobe was very wide. Felt odd when you're
used to a grouped 18 ele.


The XG10E/W also scores well on F/B ratio in comparison.

I just don't know where these figures come from. I'm certain that a TC18B
(or K when you could get them) will be dramatically better in this respect
than an XG10W. I have great respect for the big XGs --used hundreds -- but
not the little ones.

The answer with Sutton, if you can't get a K, is to use a B and reduce the
length of some of the directors a little bit. It's all documented in this
group somewhere.

I'm afraid I just can't take manufacturers' figures seriously. I'm not
saying they set out to tell lies, it's just that there's so much room for
embelishment. When anything interesting appears on the market I try six or
ten and make my own mind up. Sometimes I do direct comparisions. In some
instances I have bought ten aerials and thrown six away because they are
too bad to use. Less of that nowadays though. I think all the
manufacturers are pretty slick at tweaking their designs empirically.
Years ago there were some grouped high gain aes on the market that were
actually worse than contract 10 eles!

The fact is that if you know what you're doing you can get better gain and
directivity out of two stacked 18ele grouped aerials than any wideband
high gain monster on the market.

Bill

Which is fine when you don't need high gain over the whole of bands IV and V
(agreeing that high gain widebands are nearly useless at group A.)
Although, around here an A diplexed with a C/D gives good results on Lark
Stoke (especially on the A frequencies) and similarly diplexing a group E
onto an A for Ridge Hill can work well, or even feeding the DTTV input soley
with the group E.

I tend to use B's on SC now. The difference even here where signal levels
aren't brilliant is marginal even up at 55. The TCX 18B/K is fine, and I
even found a new TC18E a while back which is stored ready for a deserving
use!

I don't actually need any more gain here at home, I'm averaging 90% on all
muxes.
I can't see how a more directional aerial would help the CCI as Emley is
directly behind SC when viewed from the rx location. It's only an issue
during lifts, but then the Emley digital signal causes SC analogue to become
grainy, and the Emley analogue reduces the SC mux quality significantly.

Bill Wright wrote:

The answer with Sutton, if you can't get a K, is to use a B and reduce the
length of some of the directors a little bit. It's all documented in this
group somewhere.

Up the top end of this thread:

http://groups.google.co.uk/group/uk....db?lnk=gst&q=#

(result seems to be working nicely by the way - thanks Bill)


--
Cheers,

John.

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"Doctor D" wrote in message
...

I can't see how a more directional aerial would help the CCI as Emley is
directly behind SC when viewed from the rx location.

That of course is the crux of the matter. I've heard tell of this problem in
Ripon, where the aerial is looking south to Emley. (They are supposed to
watch Bilsdale round there but don't like Tyne Tees)

Bill

"John Rumm" wrote in message
news
http://groups.google.co.uk/group/uk....db?lnk=gst&q=#

(result seems to be working nicely by the way - thanks Bill)

Oh good. I did another one since then and it was OK.

Bill