Test your knowledge (this foxed me!)

We were getting complaints about reception from a couple of the
residents at a block of 16 flats in Chesterfield. The flats were
built
in 1993. I rung the complainers and asked for details. Both were
elderly and had 'just the four channels'. They reported snowy, ghosty
pictures, especially on ITV. Reception had always been poor, but the
daughter of one of them had called round and told her mum that it
just
wasn't good enough, and pushed her into complaining. I think mum had
asked her friend and thus we had two complaints. I spoke to the
daughter, who was there when I rung mum. She said that mum really
needed a new TV set but she knew from her own experience that if
reception of the 'ordinary' channels was poor reception of the
digital
ones would be terrible. However the two ladies had asked a few other
neighbours as well and had been told that reception was almost
perfect, so they were convinced that the problem was something in
their own flats. Without even going out there I knew that the aerial
and amplifier would be in a resident's loft, so access would be a
problem. I had a few phone numbers for other residents from the
housing association so I rung round and asked if anyone knew which
loft had the aerial in it, and also if reception was OK. One was
using
a dish, but all the others said that reception from the aerial system
was perfect, except for the BBC channels, which tended to drop out
occasionally. "Does the BBC send out a weaker signal?" Eventually I
found out where the aerial and amplifier were so I arranged a visit.
The fix was quick and easy, and totally effective.

Can anyone suggest why reception was as the residents described? All
the information you need is given above.


Bill

In article
,
wrote:
We were getting complaints about reception from a couple of the
residents at a block of 16 flats in Chesterfield. The flats were
built
in 1993. I rung the complainers and asked for details. Both were
elderly and had 'just the four channels'. They reported snowy, ghosty
pictures, especially on ITV. Reception had always been poor, but the
daughter of one of them had called round and told her mum that it
just
wasn't good enough, and pushed her into complaining. I think mum had
asked her friend and thus we had two complaints. I spoke to the
daughter, who was there when I rung mum. She said that mum really
needed a new TV set but she knew from her own experience that if
reception of the 'ordinary' channels was poor reception of the
digital
ones would be terrible. However the two ladies had asked a few other
neighbours as well and had been told that reception was almost
perfect, so they were convinced that the problem was something in
their own flats. Without even going out there I knew that the aerial
and amplifier would be in a resident's loft, so access would be a
problem. I had a few phone numbers for other residents from the
housing association so I rung round and asked if anyone knew which
loft had the aerial in it, and also if reception was OK. One was
using
a dish, but all the others said that reception from the aerial system
was perfect, except for the BBC channels, which tended to drop out
occasionally. "Does the BBC send out a weaker signal?" Eventually I
found out where the aerial and amplifier were so I arranged a visit.
The fix was quick and easy, and totally effective.

Can anyone suggest why reception was as the residents described? All
the information you need is given above.

viewers tuned to a very weak Belmont signal?

replace the fuse in the amplifier's psu?

Does the BBC send out a weaker signal? - no, its on ch 33 where a contact
aerial is usually 6 -10db down on ch 26.

--
From KT24

Using a RISC OS computer running v5.16

" wrote in message
...

Can anyone suggest why reception was as the residents described? All
the information you need is given above.


Bill


Both the old ladies should have gone to specsavers?

wrote:

Can anyone suggest why reception was as the residents described? All
the information you need is given above.

Installed aerial was a C/D pointed at Brockwell for analogue only
reception, the owner of the flat whose loft contained the aerial/amp got
freeview so re-aligned it to Chesterfield to get digital reception, the
C/D aerial is enough out of band on MUX1 (C34) that there are some
dropouts, but "good enough" on other muxes (C40-52)

The C/D aerial is a long way out of band A for analogue reception from
Chesterfield, with ITV on C23 being the absolute worst.

You replaced the aerial with a wideband (LP?) aligned on Chesterfield,
drank plenty of tea and drove home feeling pleased with yourself?

On Feb 20, 11:16*pm, Andy Burns wrote:
wrote:
Can anyone suggest why reception was as the residents described? All
the information you need is given above.

Installed aerial was a C/D pointed at Brockwell for analogue only
reception, the owner of the flat whose loft contained the aerial/amp got
freeview so re-aligned it to Chesterfield to get digital reception, the
C/D aerial is enough out of band on MUX1 (C34) that there are some
dropouts, but "good enough" on other muxes (C40-52)

The C/D aerial is a long way out of band A for analogue reception from
Chesterfield, with ITV on C23 being the absolute worst.

You replaced the aerial with a wideband (LP?) aligned on Chesterfield,
drank plenty of tea and drove home feeling pleased with yourself?

Andy, your answer is slightly incorrect but is so close to what
actually happened that I think you will have to be declared the
winner. In fact, the aerial was a venerable Antiference TC18B, mounted
vertically and looking towards the Chesterfield relay. It had
obviously been like that since Day One. I've no idea why the original
installers used a Gp B aerial. Maybe they thought they would be using
Emley Moor, but found by trial and error that Chesterfield was better,
even with the wrong group aerial. The DTT muxes were coming in quite
well, except for mux 1. Maybe the installers were psychic and
predicted DTT!

Bill

Psychic? Kind of reminds me of an episode where someone wanted to test if
dousers really knew what they were about and could actually locate things
underground. The test was very inconclusive as it happened, but it was done
at or near Crystal Palace, and the dousers complained the aerials upset
their detection somewhat....

Brian

--
Brian Gaff -
Note:- In order to reduce spam, any email without 'Brian Gaff'
in the display name may be lost.
Blind user, so no pictures please!
" wrote in message
...
On Feb 20, 11:16 pm, Andy Burns wrote:
wrote:
Can anyone suggest why reception was as the residents described? All
the information you need is given above.

Installed aerial was a C/D pointed at Brockwell for analogue only
reception, the owner of the flat whose loft contained the aerial/amp got
freeview so re-aligned it to Chesterfield to get digital reception, the
C/D aerial is enough out of band on MUX1 (C34) that there are some
dropouts, but "good enough" on other muxes (C40-52)

The C/D aerial is a long way out of band A for analogue reception from
Chesterfield, with ITV on C23 being the absolute worst.

You replaced the aerial with a wideband (LP?) aligned on Chesterfield,
drank plenty of tea and drove home feeling pleased with yourself?

Andy, your answer is slightly incorrect but is so close to what
actually happened that I think you will have to be declared the
winner. In fact, the aerial was a venerable Antiference TC18B, mounted
vertically and looking towards the Chesterfield relay. It had
obviously been like that since Day One. I've no idea why the original
installers used a Gp B aerial. Maybe they thought they would be using
Emley Moor, but found by trial and error that Chesterfield was better,
even with the wrong group aerial. The DTT muxes were coming in quite
well, except for mux 1. Maybe the installers were psychic and
predicted DTT!

Bill

Brian Gaff wrote:
Psychic? Kind of reminds me of an episode where someone wanted to test if
dousers really knew what they were about and could actually locate things
underground. The test was very inconclusive as it happened, but it was done
at or near Crystal Palace, and the dousers complained the aerials upset
their detection somewhat....

Dowsers always fail, and there's *always* an excuse.

BugBear

"Brian Gaff" wrote in message
om...
Psychic? Kind of reminds me of an episode where someone wanted to test if
dousers really knew what they were about and could actually locate things
underground. The test was very inconclusive as it happened, but it was
done at or near Crystal Palace, and the dousers complained the aerials
upset their detection somewhat....

Brian

Tests near Crystal Palace can be a problem ...

Back in the "good old days" of 405-line, a customer brought her TV into the
shop for repair saying it would only get BBC. I tried it out the next day,
expecting to have to change the valves in the tuner, and got a perfect
picture on both BBC and ITV. She collected the set and took it home; an hour
later I got a furious phone call from her saying it would still only get
BBC.

I went to her house, it was at Crystal Palace. I switched to ITV and showed
her a perfect picture. She pointed out to me, very gently, that yes it was a
perfect picture but it was still the BBC picture even though I had selected
ITV. I racked my brains, trying to remember if I'd made the same mistake
back in the workshop, and took it away with me. But in the workshop it got
BBC when I selected BBC, and ITV when I selected ITV.

Returning to her house, I tried to be a bit more logical. The fault turned
out to be just that the connection in the aerial plug had broken. And the
perfect picture - well she was so close to the transmitter that without an
aerial signal, the TV was happy to pick up the BBC signal on its IF strip.

---
Allan

Returning to her house, I tried to be a bit more logical. The fault turned
out to be just that the connection in the aerial plug had broken. And the
perfect picture - well she was so close to the transmitter that without an
aerial signal, the TV was happy to pick up the BBC signal on its IF strip.


A mate was telling me that some were trying to resurrect A Band 1 405
line service sometime perhaps from Ally Pally?...

--
Tony Sayer

Brian Gaff wrote:
Psychic? Kind of reminds me of an episode where someone wanted to test if
dousers really knew what they were about and could actually locate things
underground. The test was very inconclusive as it happened, but it was done
at or near Crystal Palace, and the dousers complained the aerials upset
their detection somewhat....


I doubt if dowsers have much insight to how their
abilities work (assuming it's not all deception), but
I wouldn't dismiss them just because no-one has come
up with a satisfactory test. After reading a quite
objective journalist's account of one successful
dowser (a farmer who specialised in finding water
sources for colleagues, saving them thousands of
pounds in water authority charges), I wondered if the
human body's nervous system might actually be capable
of detecting very weak electromagnetic fields, even
those caused by running water (in sufficient quantity).

The brain would normally filter these out as "noise"
but they could cause very small movements in the
nerves that are normally invisible but detectable by
finely-balanced rods. In a modern, urban environment,
there's so much electrical noise that it would be
difficult to detect one source, but it might still be
possible in the countryside.

OTOH, you would think those aerials would have any
dowsing rods swinging wildly, if any of that were
true. However, any fields detectable by dowsing would
have to be of quite low frequency - maybe 50 Hz!