News

I received an interesting phone call this afternoon and have been assured that the fault regarding transmission and reception of the BBC channels via the Bromsgrove transmitter has been resolved.

It's just over three weeks since the BBC reception problems first started but I can also independently confirm since carrying out some reception tests of my own this evening all is now well with multiplex 26 and the BBC reception fault from Bromsgrove has indeed been fixed.

It was while working for a customer in Vines Lane, Droitwich who had lost all of her TV channels last Friday afternoon that I suddenly realised that the problem was not directly a fault of the Bromsgrove transmitter but it in fact was the fault of another transmitter near Telford called "The Wrekin"

There are three transmitters in the West Midlands that use the same frequency (multiplex 26) to transmit the BBC and although the Lark Stoke transmitter near Stratford, which is one of them, along with our local transmitter at Bromsgrove transmit their signals vertically I was certain that it was the horizontally polarised transmitter "The Wrekin" that was the cause of the problem, stopping many from watching the BBC.

Apparently these three transmitters have to be synchronised and locked together to stop them interfering with each other and for some reason and probably sometime during the work that was carried out on the 1st of June The Wrekin lost that lock which then created problems for thousands of TV Aerials that were pointing at Bromsgrove.

Slightly off the subject but worth a mention here as there's a connection with my news item above and a question that I've been asked a dozen or more times over the years, mostly from people living in and around Worcester with regards to TV reception from the Malvern transmitter. ​

"To improve reception why don't they put the transmitter on top of the Malverns instead of just half way up"?

The simple answer is - For all of the thousand plus TV transmitters that serve the UK to work in harmony together, their power output as well as their positioning & height are all super critical so placing even a relatively low powered TV transmitter (like the one at Malvern) a few hundred feet higher on the top of the hills could cause mass interference, with the potential to disrupt TV reception for millions in the Southern and Eastern parts of the UK.