My mum and dad lived in Broadbottom just before I was born. The poor TV reception and lack of local entertainment at the time might indirectly be the cause of my existence.
You've had 114 accidents because of looking at antennas? I love you, man. You're just like me. When my daughter was barely able to talk and we were riding down the interstate, she would very often point and call out "Tower, daddy... tower!". Yep, I'm always looking at towers and antennas everywhere I go. Love your videos!
I still look at towers too. I worked for Arqiva (formally ntl) for nearly 10 years, and often did surveys up towers and masts for new antenna installations. I have lived on a Greek island for the last 14 years and have 2 towers about 1km away on a hilltop. Would love to get up one again.
On high ground in Glossop you will often see two TV antenna's facing different directions. One vertically polarised for the Glossop repeater and one normally high gain horizontally polarised for winter hill. The reason for this is the Glossop repeater doesn't give us all the channels that are available from winter hill, like Sky news ect.
All my neighbours in Chester point at Winter Hill, but our aerial points the other way to Moel-y-parc in Wales. Not because I like Welsh TV, but because of a big (protected) tree right in our line-of-sight to Winter Hill. It does look odd if you look up and see it.
I live in Ireland....before the advent of Digital signals most houses here had 3 aerials, 1 for receiving signals from local transmitters broadcasting the National TV stations, 1 aerial for receiving independent TV from large distant high power transmitters and another aerial for receiving UK signals either directly from the UK or from illegal deflector systems. Many houses also had satellite dishes as well and possibly an FM radio antenna so there was also another level of complexity. I spent 40 years installing these aerials and dishes and there was never a dull moment they were good times and reasonably profitable but I fear streaming services will ultimately replace everything.
I grew up in a valley where every television station tower was on a different hill. Our TV antenna had an individual Yagi for every station (all three of them) pointed in different directions. Each went to a "channel trap" (a passive bandpass filter) tuned to the station to avoid receiving multipath (ghosting) for other stations then they went into a combiner. That was what you had to do to get good TV reception there.
@scottlarson1548 "That was what you had to do to get good TV reception there." I wish it were possible to get good TV nowadays, I might renew my TV licence.
As someone who grew up in and around a notoriously hilly town (Cork, in Ireland, if anyone's interested), I knew straightaway the answer to the question in the title. Our TV reception was the pits, and not being in a cabled area, we had to wait for the advent of satellite before we could see a decent picture. On radio we could only get the 2 national stations in mono, and only intermittently at that, but a 5 minute walk brought a whole plethora of pirates into line - of - sight...
@@richiehoyt8487 In the U.S. most television stations in hilly areas have "translators" which are just small repeaters that fill in areas that the main signal can't reach. Where I am I can receive two translators as well as the main signals they're repeating.
@@scottlarson1548 Thanks for that... I probably should have clarified that we do have those in Ireland as well, but my hometown is _particularly_ bad for hills - picture Rio, or San Francisco - so there were inevitable pockets. (The standing joke was that the reason why Cork girls have such good legs was on account of all the Hills... 😐🥱) They probably do have better infill coverage now, this being 30 years ago, especially with the advent of digital (as you know, unlike with analogue, digital reception tends to be an 'all or nothing' deal). The particular address I lived at where I said I could bring in a whole bunch of radio stations with just a few minutes walk, happened to actually be a few miles outside of the city, and we had this great big lump of a hill immediately behind the house. It did actually come as quite the surprise to me though when I learned that as important as distance from the (VHF/UHF) transmitter was (Inverse Square Law, and all that), it was the presence - or absence - of obstacles that was key. As for where _you_ are living, I shouldn't be surprised if you've had to invest in a rotating mount for your antennae (or aerials, as we call them). Not necessarily a bad thing I suppose, if it means you're able to bring in more channels. That's of course if you even still watch terrestrial TV! I remember being amazed as a kid at how many TV channels the average American was able to take for granted, just 'over-the-air' - even if it was a case of, as Bruce Springsteen said, "18 Channels, and nothing's on..." (Or _something_ like that.) The dead hand of governmental inertia meant that for much of my life we only had two terrestrial TV channels, (though one _could_ get British TV in 'overspill' areas) and in fact for most of my childhood only one! (If I'm repeating myself, I apologize.) Even now, I think we only have four or five. Of course, as a number of people have noted in the comments, with so many ways to watch nowadays, much of the audience, especially the younger cohort, don't bother to watch terrestrial TV anymore, or even TV at all! This has resulted in something of a vicious circle where you have 40 channels of (mostly still) free content; but it's all Murder She Wrote re~runs and endless infomercials flogging back~scratching, steam cleaning gew~gaws. "Operators standing by to take YOUR order, _NOW!_ " Yeah, it's gone to the dogs here too, if not to the same extent. It puts me in mind of the episode of Breaking Bad (must be 10 years ago now, if not more 🤦🏻😔) when Jesse Pinkman goes to the house of a junkie couple who've ripped off one of his accomplices of much of their 'merchandise'. There he discovers a child, filthy with the dirt and almost autistic from neglect, who is there on his own, without a sitter. Jesse is really upset (possibly the penny is dropping that this is what his stock~in~trade does). However while he is shocked at the squalor, what _really_ outrages him is that the TV only gets the terrestrial stations (or possibly, basic cable.) He even _says_ it to 'Spooge', the kid's dad - "Decent TV is a human right, Goddamit!" Right up there with nutritious food, and clean water... Hieararchy of Needs, Man; Hierarchy of Needs!🙄😕
Where I'm from in the South Wales valleys we have a plethora of relays, but it would be unusual to be able to pick up more than one. Where I am in Guildford, I have an antenna facing Crystal Palace and one facing Guildford. Neighbours' aerials are varied, some face Crystal Palace, some Guildford. When HD first started, Guildford didn't relay HD, so pointing at Crystal Palace was the only way to get HD (well, apart from satellite). It's reasonably flat from here to Crystal Palace.
I grew up in the west Midlands, 7 miles from Sutton Coldfield as our main uhf site. I was always fascinated by tv and radio reception, and when I started to learn the tv trade I managed to get hold of some surplus uhf aerials and started to play around in the loft. I managed to get Granada from winter hill, with borderline colour, and also htv Wales and s4c. These were both constant signals, but on occasional times, due to tropospheric conditions I also received Anglia tv from sandy heath. It was my holy grail to try and receive itv London, but sadly I never managed this. Needless to say, I also became a vhf 2 metre radio ham. Those were the days.
Here the DVB-T2 transmitters all transmit synchronously on the same set of channels for each region. This of course precludes the use of relays, all transmitters have to be fed by fiber. But it means there is automatic "fill" of gaps, you can be receiving two transmitters at the same time and automatically pick the best signal as it varies because of propagation etc.
@@Rob2 absolutely it does. I'll bet you (and I'd be very interested to actually check) that because of your topography you have nowhere near as many transmitters per capita or per 100km² than the UK therefore it's much more economical for you to line feed your sites and introduce regional SFN's and make much more efficient use of spectrum. Something we only do when we absolutely have to. We also don't have the luxury of being able to do that because different transmitters are currently on different grouped aerials so a lot of houses would have to change theirs. Like I said I'm just going from my experience as a Brit but you have more technical luxuries because of your topography and population distribution.
We and the two direction antennas too. We had one pointed at Winter Hill from our North Wales house, with still pretty reasonable signal strength. We then also had an antenna pointed at Moel-Y-Parc. The signal there was great but we'd only receive the Welsh channels. Granada & English Channel 4 were worth the additional antenna.
The same thing here in Chelmsford where we are on the edge of the Crystal Palace transmitter and also on the edge of the Sudbury transmitter. As London and Norwich broadcast different programmes at various times we have a choice. (just don't try set top aerials around here, the never work!)
The quality of your photography and video making is exceptional, then add the very interesting transmitter infomation and your channel ranks as one of the best. Love the extra details for the local area and history.
You didn’t really answer the original question, which was, Why do aerials face different directions on the same house? Surely one or the other transmitter would be preferable for any specific location so why multiple aerials?
That was what I was waiting for! :) In one region here in New Zealand it was common in to have two antennas due to TVNZ (our BBC equivalent) broadcasting on VHF ch 1+3 from one site and the commercial operators (our ITV equivalent) broadcasting from a completely different site but on higher VHF channels. There many people would have VHF-I antennas pointing towards the TVNZ site and VHF-III towards the TV3/4 site. Another example is where the main site broadcasted all four analogue channels (back in the day) but the relays only did 1-2 channels, sometimes you would find two antennas -- one for the relay to get the best pictures for the channels it did carry and another for the main station if they really wanted to watch show not carried by the relay!
Probably due to pre digital viewing. Whereby, another transmitter could be picked up, for different programming. Usually sports, films etc were shown on one transmitter but not another. Example being that here in Wrexham, we can use Winter Hill, The Wrekin, Sutton Coldfield and Wrexham Rhos. Pre digital, the English transmitters had Channel 4 and Channel 5. Whereas, the Welsh ones carried S4C. Some sports/films were shown on the different regional variations of BBC, ITV etc. now it’s all digital, you can get the same channels everywhere you go (apart from Freeview Light transmitters) like the Broadbottom one mentioned in the video. Where you only get the main three multiplexes.
Come to Wirksworth, about 25 miles further south! We face north to the Bolehill repeater for the East Midlands, others point to Sutton Coldfield for the West Midlands.
When I lived in Cyprus under certain weather conditions we could receive TV programs from Egypt , Libya and the Lebanon, four episodes of Bonanza in one evening. Love your video, info and scenery.
You haven't lived until you've gotten drunk and watched Battlestar Galactica dubbed in German, subtitled in Croatian, in glorious black and white in a hotel room in Zagreb!
I knew a guy whose small community was near the beach, on the wrong side of a hill from the TV transmission tower. The community's developer decided to do what was fashionable then, and install a relay tower that received the analog TV signals and sent them down pre-installed coaxial cable to all the homes. Homeowners would then pay a monthly fee for access. Until one day, the developer went bankrupt and the coaxial cables went dead. The residents association took over the relay with the help of a technically-minded local resident, but the signal that reached the houses was pretty rubbish. I think they realized that they had no hope of supporting the repairs of decoder boxes, so this was never going to be a long-term solution. Fortunately, analog TV was being phased out and the government gave grants to people in this community to have satellite dishes installed instead.
I'm from Mottram next door to Broadbottom (or rather top o' th' hill) and it's lovely to see some drone footage of my local area! Excellent and informative video as ever, thanks.
I used to live in Didcot Oxfordshire, starting in the 70's we had 3 antennas on our roof pointing in different directions, coming down to a couple of switches, our best reception was midlands TV (now central), but we had the option of getting London or Southernn TV, though sometimes a litle more grainy, several programmes were regional, so it was a way to get alternatives, this was before Sky TV was poplular.
Another informative video Lewis 👍 Many years ago when I was on my YTS at Radio Rentals; a lot of the homes in Lincoln would point their aerials towards Midlands (ATV, Central) from the Waltham transmitter rather than Yorkshire from the Belmont transmitter. This was because building work at the County Hospital was enough to scupper the signal. Even now, I have a wideband aerial to enable Freeview reception from both sites for the main telly and if I use one of those "super powerful, high quality" aerials from that well known auction site; I still can't get a signal from Belmont in the back room; but can get a weak signal from somewhere over Sheffield way.
That also reminds me of Hunstanton, in Norfolk. Despite being in the East Anglia region, the strongest signals come from straight across The Wash, from the Belmont transmitter - although I have seen a few aerials that are possibly Waltham? Even the Sandringham repeater mast is not used that much, and in areas where I have seen aerials on the Sandringham mast, there have also been aerials on other main masts (probably Belmont).
Lots of houses in my town have two aerials. We can receive signals from Wenvoe and Mendip. It was worth having both as you could then pickup Welsh and Bristol regional programming. It was great being able to choose between S4C and Channel 4 before digital TV came along.
The feeds coming in from fibre - it’s probably a question for the TV signals using digital modulation using SFNs (single frequency networks), where the digital coding is “slow” (in electronics terms) and can be retransmitted on the same frequency channel, without negative reinforcement. But the key is to avoid “mush zones” because you still want to synchronise the timing as much as possible - multipath interference is still your enemy. Even though the DVB system using COFDM (instead of VSB like the Americans’ ATSC v1.0) it’s still possible to get reflections off steep hills, objects and aircraft, so you want to help the receiver decoder as much as possible and avoid temporal offset. In home computing terms, COFDM is like a low baud rate carrier signal with a high symbol complexity, so imagine a choir of singers changing their harmony of notes every 2 seconds, as opposed to a solo singer changing notes every 0.5 seconds. Back in the late 1990s the Americans argued with themselves about abandoning VSB (vestigial sideband) for their digital modulation in favour of the European choice, and they came close to doing it after launch, which is saying something for them (though anyone with a long memory may note they abandoned CBS’s colour TV standard after official ratification in 1950). The VSB broadcasts have been plagued, or were in the early days, with reflections off buildings, particularly in dense cities. They partially solved it with more complex demodulator hardware for the customer, but the permanent fix came with ATSC 2.0, which went for COFDM. Of course, never one to miss an opportunity for commercial spoils, they quickly replaced that with ATSC 3.0 before it ever got started, and loaded it up with DRM and audience tracking. Sigh, it’s now stillborn … and engineers have found that most TVs can receive AVC and HEVC on the old modulation ATSC 1.0, achieving 4K HDR that way. Meanwhile, LG have stopped manufacturing ATSC 3.0 tuners in new TVs because the patents are crazy and everyone is being sued left right & centre.
That helps explain why poor DVB signal can be fixed by chaining amplifiers/“signal boosters” together; while ATSC generally can’t. Fascinating they had a failed 2.0 and 3.0 which would’ve worked better.
When I was a kid where my mate lived in Chesterfield he could get Yorkshire and Central ITV depending whether the gasometer nearby was up or down. One used to show some programs later than the other, so if I had missed the start of something I could nip round to his house.
Reminds me of here on the east coast of Australia before 1990 when the tv market was opened up . In Newcastle we could only get 2 stations unless you lived on a hill or put up a 40 ft mast with stacked array to get 3 more stations from Sydney , people who had hills in the way sometimes put up masts to get the station from Taree which is about 100 km north but had to change from horizontal to vertical signal
I receive Winter Hill, here in Wrexham. My log periodic tv aerial points to North West. As the Wrexham transmitter only carries the three main Freeview multiplexes.
Nice video. I’m in the states. I have similar terrain in Tennessee. One station added several relays. Where I live it’s common to need a very large antenna. Horizontal polarization, 68 miles or 109 km away.
My dad would have loved this video as he was from nearby Hattersley. As a kid I had a fascination with trains, and he used to show me pictures of that very viaduct. I wonder what transmitter the residents of Hattersley are tuned to.
Same in my town, I have 4 antennas, 2 vertical and 2 horizontal pointing different directions. The local TV signals are dictated by the weather so need two sets of antennas to pick up two different transmitters.
We had the same sort of thing in my area at the start of Freeview. The local transmitter just see the tip of it from the bottom of the roof line. Had some Freeview show's but to get all had to move the aerial's a lot more higher-up for the main transmitter about 17 mile's out.
So good to hear about the rooftop antenna positioning, brings back memories of my dad having to go adjust them on our roof in the 60s. It helped us learn real-life science and tech (and first aid).
I see this in some parts of Dukinfield. Most of the town has a clear view of Winter Hill, but there was once a huge Victorian Mill on the site where Morrison's now stands. Because of the mill blocking the Winter Hill signal in that area, many homes had their aerials pointing north towards the Saddleworth relay (vertically polarised). Even though the mill is long gone, lazy aerial erectors still put up aerials pointing at the relay, probably because they know nowt and it's easier just to do a 'carbon copy' install.
It is very common for houses here in NI to have two UHF antennas pointing different directions. One for Freeview and one for Saorview. In my area it is Divis transmitter for Freeview and for the most part Clermont Carn for Saorview. Although the specific location of our house we actually get much better Saorview reception from Kippure transmitter despite it being twice as far away from us as Clermont Carn. This is due to The Mournes largely blocking Clermont Carn for us. Some houses also still have an old VHF band 3 antenna pointed at Kippure as VHF transmissions of RTÉ 1 & 2 from there only stopped with the digital switchover, much later than VHF band 3 stopped being used for TV broadcasts in the UK. I have always been interested in this and always look up to the rooftops everywhere I go.
Our village is near the boundary between the East and West Midlands and is served by two transmitters at Waltham and Sutton Coldfield in opposite directions. I would say that about 50% of the aerials face in each direction and gain almost equal power output signals from both transmitters. Which one you go for depends on whether you class yourself as an East or West Midlander as it only really affects the local news programmes.
Kind of similar for me in Sawley, near East Midlands Airport (In Derbyshire, but also got Nottingham and Leicester as Neighbours, and Staffordshire not far either), in that in days of old, we used Sutton Coldfield and sometimes still do to this day, although Waltham and it's relay at Kimberly, Nottingham, is our main transmitter.
Ha! Here in Rhode Island in the USA we use two antenna pointing about 120 degrees apart to pick up different transmitters in and out of state. Gets us a total of about 50 digital "over the air" TV channels. About 3 are actually worth watching - but 2 are on one transmitter and one on the other so you need two antenna. I say "about" 50 as it tends to vary a little with the signal absorbing humdity and foliage.
At our summerhouse (Sweden) previously before digital TV entered the arena, our antenna was REALLY pointing the wrong direction. I mean it - the opposite direction of the transmitter (a relay station BTW). That one you all can think about. =)
Similar story in my village. We are spitting distance off Bilsdale and some in the village could hang a bit of damp string out of their window and get a perfect signal where many of us are using Emley Moor and need boosters or high gain antennas for decent signal.
The 'white stick' antennas are simply four (usually - can be more) stacked dipoles inside the tube. Should be about the same performance as the loop antennas with a slightly different patterns (in general, dipoles will have a larger main lobe while loops side lobes will be larger). Of course, it all depends on the wavelength of the dipole, too.
It’s pretty much the way a repeater works. It receives the signal on one frequency and retransmits it on another extending the range of the client transmitter “your radio”.
Same issue with my home town in worcestershire, nestled in the Severn Valley. In some parts of town the signal from Sutton Coldfield is easier to pick up, and in others the Malvern repeater is easier. There is a major problem with 'ghosting' too, this is the problem with the hill on the other side of the valley bouncing back a delayed signal. My father fitted a high mast with double antenna and still suffered with a poor picture. Back in the 70's my father decided to knock down the wall dividing the lounge and dining room, this wall had a double chimney breast, and the antenna was mounted on the chimney, so as a temporary measure we hung a small antenna on a nail in the loft. The attenuation of the signal by the timber and slate gave us the best picture we'd had in years, and the antenna is probably still hanging on the nail to this day!
Brilliant stuff as always, yes I would like to see more. Also it would be cool to cover HAN so we can work out what sites have the gateways ect for smart meters.
In Taunton (Deane), Somerset we had two transmitters, Stockland on the Blackdown Hills and Mendip above Wells. Stockland broadcast the Westward Programmes coming from Plymouth whilst broadcast HTV West/Wales. My father obtained a switch which switched between the two (no remotes, one had to get off ones ar*se and push the buttons). In our case a TV rented off Radio Rentals.
You get the same problem right in the centre of Manchester, not due to geography but due to buildings like Sunley / City Tower cresting a barrier to Winter Hill. Try and do an unfiltered Freeview scan from an aerial on the roof of the Mercure hotel, and it will lock to Moel-y-Parc and give you Welsh channels regardless of where you point the aerial.
My grandmother had her TV antennas like that. One pointing East to get KHQA-TV and WGEM-TV in Quincy, IL, and one pointing South for KOMU-TV and KRCG-TV. One little UHF antenna for KMIZ-TV. As of 2019 they still worked, though the mast has been bent down a bit, due to all the VHF stations still being on VHF (KOMU and KRCG moved to UHF after this, not sure of KHQA and WGEM.) Cheers! K0CBS. EDIT: When KTVO-TV Kirksville got their new tower in the 80's, she got them off the backside of the South facing antenna with a great clear picture. KTVO has a major tower collapse not too long after it went on the air with it that took the lives of the tower crew trying to fix a fault in the tower.
3 or 4 years ago I visited a friend on a small estate in Spain, just down from Benidorm. All the houses had small dish aerials with a long thin LNB, and what appeared to be a small glowing red LED. Many hours spent soaking up the sun and looking up.....sad really!
Before the wall came down, the Stasi would reward loyal East Germans who would report their fellow Berlin neighbors for having their TV antennas pointed towards the decadent West and not the German Democratic Republic in the East.
Any source for that happening in the 80s? That's the time "before the wall came down" and the time I remember. In my place you'd officially form and register a club with the people in the house (or even village) to improve national (read: east german) and international (understand: west german) TV reception. Massive Yagi groups (4x20+ elements for UHF) with purpose built pre-amps where the norm and usually cost was shared with the neighbours in said clubs. I keep reading about "antennas in the wrong direction" being removed in the 60s, no own experience, wasn't born then.
@@thes764 If I recall correctly even TV tuners in the Eastern Bloc were hardlocked into Eastern Europe frequencies, so to receive Western broadcasts you had to modify the tuner.
@@jimbotron70 You recall incorrectly. Not only were the TV bands identical in east and west Germany. The East German colour TVs even decoded the western PAL signal, in addition to the eastern SECAM. I used one through most of the 90s. Only things it was missing was a remote and extended cable TV channels, both of which I worked around by hooking it up to a VCR. I wonder what part of the eastern bloc you remember... The east was bad enough as it actually was, no need to make things up.
I've always had a passing interest in the local TV transmitting network here in Sawley, Derbyshire, the main transmitting point for us, being Waltham, Leicestershire. We do sometimes use a relay located at Kimberly, Nottinghamshire (Nearby Eastwood, Nottinghamshire is also an interesting relay, where my mate lives) in the Long Eaton / Sawley area, however in days before Waltham, we also used Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands, and to this day still use this, which was the case at my old place, as one of the bedrooms made it difficult to use Waltham. I have been able to get broadcasts from one of the Emley Moor relays (Likely Chesterfield, Derbyshire) before, weather dependant, which is fascinating considering Emley Moor is in Huddersfield, and I'm just up the road from East Midlands Airport.
I pointed my t.v. aerial away from Winter Hill to get a better signal from the Mossley relay station. But Channel 5 wasn't operational at that time I had a t.v. No t.v. now for 24 years.
Another great video Lewis. I always knew those towers on Werneth Low were to get the emergency services over that hill back in the 80s/90s. I'm surprised they didn't include TV and radio as well either then or now.
When I was a kid (and everything was analogue) if your UHF antenna pointed south west you got Thames/London Weekend ITV from Ally Pally and if it pointed north east you got Anglia Television ITV from Mendlesham transmitting station. BBC2 (which had started on UHF) wasn't regionalised so it didn't matter which direction you were looking and when BBC1 went from VHF to UHF two years later, allowing you to use only one antenna, the only regionalisation you really noticed was whether you got _London & SE_ or _BBC Look East east_ for the news segments.
Thank you,Lewis, for a very informative video. May I also say thank you for the pieces of railway history, regarding the bridges or viaducts... I learned from you today, so thank you 😊
Just discovered TH-cam unsubscribed me, how very dare it! Fascinating video, I live in High Lane and work near Chorley, so am very familiar with the whole area, I love finding out all this stuff!
Many aerials in Flintshire, particularly in the flatter south and on the coast, still point towards the River Dee, resulting in reception of Granada as reception of the reasonably expected HTV etc. from Moel-y-Parc in northern Flintshire was usually poorer. This practice also resulted in Channel 4 programming being available without any delay; before 2010, S4C would only sometimes simulcast it. I was about 9 when I started watching HTV regularly, because Sky ─ who’d only just put ITV1 on the platform ─ only took my postcode into account and not local practice! I do remember Granada briefly being available on Sky 963 in the early 2000s, however, which required very careful use of the remote, as you might imagine! It’s interesting to see a similar kind of thing happen in North West England itself. Thank you for yet another great video!
Of course there are many places that have antenna pointing in multiple directions to get different regions, either because they want a different region, better reception or back in the day different regions could have vastly different schedules and some networked programmes could be shown a fair bit later on some franchises. Yeovil and Portland are some places where different households want different regions, West or Westcountry/South West in Yeovil's case and Westcountry/South West and South in Portland's case (Stockland Hill/Rowridge). Interestingly some relays have RBL antenna pointing in different directions, originally that would be because the BBC and ITV had different ideas as to what area a relay should be in but now it can be for a different feed if the main one is unusable for some reason, some main stations even had different regions from different parts of it's main antenna if two different areas needed covering, like Selkirk. A for a backup/RBS link the Weymouth relay in Wyke Regis has two low down trough RBL antennas facing Stockland Hill and a new log periodic antenna facing another relay, Bincome Hill, on the other side of the Weymouth area, this is a back-up to the main feed presumably due to the mainly sea path of the signal from Stockland Hill which can be subject to tidal fading whereas the Bincome Hill transmitter does not have a sea-path for it's RBL.
There are plenty of chains of relays around the country. Most notably in Wales where the signals get carried up the valleys. All are relays in their own right with few exceptions. Notably Biggin Hill which relays from Crystal Palace to Kenley isn't intended for customer reception. That dish near the end is for BBC DAB distribution. All BBC DAB sites will have that. DAB, being an SFN requires all transmitters to transmit at the same time (almost ;-) ) so sat distribution is the easiest way to ensure all the transmitters have the signal ready to go.
I used to like seeing the BBC World Service short wave transmitting station at Rampisham Down in Dorset. The curtain dipole arrays and pylons were quite fascinating but unfortunately it was all taken down in 2011.
I dont have a TV antenna on my roof........since free to air TV is like drinking out of a toilet bowl. All I need is the internet and real informative content like Ringway Manchester.
@@oldbatwit5102 It's a very common phrase to describe people who refuse to take up new technology. :) It's even reached as far as my country, New Zealand! "OK, boomer" is a common response when older people try and enforce their old ways.
This reminds me of when Channel 5 started out. Channel 5 coverage was pretty low when it came out, and where I live we werent going to get it for our transmitter But then a transmitter further away was going to get it. I was lucky to have a small TV in my bedroom, so I decided to see if I could receive the signal. Took a new internal antenna and a booster, and I only just got a signal! It was bad, a snowy image and I would lose the signal regularly. But as Channel 5 was showing a lot of really new movies to attract viewers, it was worth it. But if anyone wanted to watch Channel 5, it would have to be from my bedroom.
When I lived in West Malling, our ariel pointed the wrong way. It meant we could pick up Carlton and Meridian. Always had a grainy image on channel 4. Alot of people were unaware of the cable that ran all around the estate. My guess was channel 4 was the reason. I wondered who paid for the installation, maintenance and power. I'm guessing that's what the big green metal boxes on the shed roofs were for. As far as I'm aware, their never was cable TV in the area. This was in the 80s and 90s, maybe even later.
Do the different transmitters work on slightly different frequencies? If not don’t the Ariel’s that have LOS to two towers get two ever so slightly out of time signals?
My mum and dad lived in Broadbottom just before I was born. The poor TV reception and lack of local entertainment at the time might indirectly be the cause of my existence.
You've had 114 accidents because of looking at antennas? I love you, man. You're just like me. When my daughter was barely able to talk and we were riding down the interstate, she would very often point and call out "Tower, daddy... tower!".
Yep, I'm always looking at towers and antennas everywhere I go. Love your videos!
I still look at towers too. I worked for Arqiva (formally ntl) for nearly 10 years, and often did surveys up towers and masts for new antenna installations. I have lived on a Greek island for the last 14 years and have 2 towers about 1km away on a hilltop. Would love to get up one again.
In this world there are bird watcher, plane spotters, train spotters and the very rarified antennae twitchers.
Antenna twitchers get a very poor reception
@@alanclarke4646 antenna issue
On high ground in Glossop you will often see two TV antenna's facing different directions. One vertically polarised for the Glossop repeater and one normally high gain horizontally polarised for winter hill.
The reason for this is the Glossop repeater doesn't give us all the channels that are available from winter hill, like Sky news ect.
Broadbottom must be my wife's mother's hometown
😂😂😂. Better than coming from Pratts bottom near Tonbridge kent
I know Pratt's bottom so well...I really do!
And the reason why these days we have wide screen TV’s.
All my neighbours in Chester point at Winter Hill, but our aerial points the other way to Moel-y-parc in Wales. Not because I like Welsh TV, but because of a big (protected) tree right in our line-of-sight to Winter Hill. It does look odd if you look up and see it.
You get the same channels. Just the wrong regional news and also no BBC 3 HD on Welsh transmitters. Instead you get S4C HD
I like Broad Bottom and I cannot lie
Gigidy
Love from Romania! on the 24 april I Will have my ham radio license exam,hope I pass it! 73
Good luck mate!
Good Luck om
Thanks all @kdof3908 @paulziminskin2ghr282
Good luck!!
All the best sir
I live in Ireland....before the advent of Digital signals most houses here had 3 aerials, 1 for receiving signals from local transmitters broadcasting the National TV stations, 1 aerial for receiving independent TV from large distant high power transmitters and another aerial for receiving UK signals either directly from the UK or from illegal deflector systems. Many houses also had satellite dishes as well and possibly an FM radio antenna so there was also another level of complexity. I spent 40 years installing these aerials and dishes and there was never a dull moment they were good times and reasonably profitable but I fear streaming services will ultimately replace everything.
Thanks!
Thank you so much!
I grew up in a valley where every television station tower was on a different hill. Our TV antenna had an individual Yagi for every station (all three of them) pointed in different directions. Each went to a "channel trap" (a passive bandpass filter) tuned to the station to avoid receiving multipath (ghosting) for other stations then they went into a combiner. That was what you had to do to get good TV reception there.
@scottlarson1548 "That was what you had to do to get good TV reception there." I wish it were possible to get good TV nowadays, I might renew my TV licence.
As someone who grew up in and around a notoriously hilly town (Cork, in Ireland, if anyone's interested), I knew straightaway the answer to the question in the title. Our TV reception was the pits, and not being in a cabled area, we had to wait for the advent of satellite before we could see a decent picture. On radio we could only get the 2 national stations in mono, and only intermittently at that, but a 5 minute walk brought a whole plethora of pirates into line - of - sight...
@@richiehoyt8487 In the U.S. most television stations in hilly areas have "translators" which are just small repeaters that fill in areas that the main signal can't reach. Where I am I can receive two translators as well as the main signals they're repeating.
@@scottlarson1548 Thanks for that... I probably should have clarified that we do have those in Ireland as well, but my hometown is _particularly_ bad for hills - picture Rio, or San Francisco - so there were inevitable pockets. (The standing joke was that the reason why Cork girls have such good legs was on account of all the Hills... 😐🥱) They probably do have better infill coverage now, this being 30 years ago, especially with the advent of digital (as you know, unlike with analogue, digital reception tends to be an 'all or nothing' deal). The particular address I lived at where I said I could bring in a whole bunch of radio stations with just a few minutes walk, happened to actually be a few miles outside of the city, and we had this great big lump of a hill immediately behind the house. It did actually come as quite the surprise to me though when I learned that as important as distance from the (VHF/UHF) transmitter was (Inverse Square Law, and all that), it was the presence - or absence - of obstacles that was key.
As for where _you_ are living, I shouldn't be surprised if you've had to invest in a rotating mount for your antennae (or aerials, as we call them). Not necessarily a bad thing I suppose, if it means you're able to bring in more channels. That's of course if you even still watch terrestrial TV! I remember being amazed as a kid at how many TV channels the average American was able to take for granted, just 'over-the-air' - even if it was a case of, as Bruce Springsteen said, "18 Channels, and nothing's on..." (Or _something_ like that.) The dead hand of governmental inertia meant that for much of my life we only had two terrestrial TV channels, (though one _could_ get British TV in 'overspill' areas) and in fact for most of my childhood only one! (If I'm repeating myself, I apologize.) Even now, I think we only have four or five. Of course, as a number of people have noted in the comments, with so many ways to watch nowadays, much of the audience, especially the younger cohort, don't bother to watch terrestrial TV anymore, or even TV at all! This has resulted in something of a vicious circle where you have 40 channels of (mostly still) free content; but it's all Murder She Wrote re~runs and endless infomercials flogging back~scratching, steam cleaning gew~gaws. "Operators standing by to take YOUR order, _NOW!_ " Yeah, it's gone to the dogs here too, if not to the same extent. It puts me in mind of the episode of Breaking Bad (must be 10 years ago now, if not more 🤦🏻😔) when Jesse Pinkman goes to the house of a junkie couple who've ripped off one of his accomplices of much of their 'merchandise'. There he discovers a child, filthy with the dirt and almost autistic from neglect, who is there on his own, without a sitter. Jesse is really upset (possibly the penny is dropping that this is what his stock~in~trade does). However while he is shocked at the squalor, what _really_ outrages him is that the TV only gets the terrestrial stations (or possibly, basic cable.) He even _says_ it to 'Spooge', the kid's dad - "Decent TV is a human right, Goddamit!" Right up there with nutritious food, and clean water... Hieararchy of Needs, Man; Hierarchy of Needs!🙄😕
@@richiehoyt8487 Don't have time to read all this sorry....
Where I'm from in the South Wales valleys we have a plethora of relays, but it would be unusual to be able to pick up more than one. Where I am in Guildford, I have an antenna facing Crystal Palace and one facing Guildford. Neighbours' aerials are varied, some face Crystal Palace, some Guildford. When HD first started, Guildford didn't relay HD, so pointing at Crystal Palace was the only way to get HD (well, apart from satellite). It's reasonably flat from here to Crystal Palace.
Oh, and just as an aside, I was born in Glossop Terrace in Cardiff.
I grew up in the west Midlands, 7 miles from Sutton Coldfield as our main uhf site.
I was always fascinated by tv and radio reception, and when I started to learn the tv trade I managed to get hold of some surplus uhf aerials and started to play around in the loft.
I managed to get Granada from winter hill, with borderline colour, and also htv Wales and s4c.
These were both constant signals, but on occasional times, due to tropospheric conditions I also received Anglia tv from sandy heath.
It was my holy grail to try and receive itv London, but sadly I never managed this.
Needless to say, I also became a vhf 2 metre radio ham.
Those were the days.
Here the DVB-T2 transmitters all transmit synchronously on the same set of channels for each region. This of course precludes the use of relays, all transmitters have to be fed by fiber.
But it means there is automatic "fill" of gaps, you can be receiving two transmitters at the same time and automatically pick the best signal as it varies because of propagation etc.
Where are you?
@@mellonians Netherlands
@@Rob2 ah yes! That makes sense. Taking advantage of that nice flat country of yours and introducing SFN's everywhere!
@@mellonians It does not depend on the flatness of the country...
@@Rob2 absolutely it does. I'll bet you (and I'd be very interested to actually check) that because of your topography you have nowhere near as many transmitters per capita or per 100km² than the UK therefore it's much more economical for you to line feed your sites and introduce regional SFN's and make much more efficient use of spectrum. Something we only do when we absolutely have to. We also don't have the luxury of being able to do that because different transmitters are currently on different grouped aerials so a lot of houses would have to change theirs.
Like I said I'm just going from my experience as a Brit but you have more technical luxuries because of your topography and population distribution.
i love the subtle humor you blend in sometimes XD
It's a bit too subtle for some, as reflected by a couple of angry comments. Not wasted on me though. :o)
Those panning drone shots of the passing trains are not easy to do, very well done.
We and the two direction antennas too. We had one pointed at Winter Hill from our North Wales house, with still pretty reasonable signal strength. We then also had an antenna pointed at Moel-Y-Parc. The signal there was great but we'd only receive the Welsh channels. Granada & English Channel 4 were worth the additional antenna.
The same thing here in Chelmsford where we are on the edge of the Crystal Palace transmitter and also on the edge of the Sudbury transmitter. As London and Norwich broadcast different programmes at various times we have a choice.
(just don't try set top aerials around here, the never work!)
The quality of your photography and video making is exceptional, then add the very interesting transmitter infomation and your channel ranks as one of the best. Love the extra details for the local area and history.
Thank you very much!
The drone shots are the best. Lewis should be an expert at aerial photography now...
Thanks for the information on the viaduct, a small diversion which I guess upset nobody on this channel.
I loved the viaduct digression!
The satellite dish at 8:56 is for DAB Backhaul.
You didn’t really answer the original question, which was, Why do aerials face different directions on the same house? Surely one or the other transmitter would be preferable for any specific location so why multiple aerials?
I came to ask this as well.
That was what I was waiting for! :) In one region here in New Zealand it was common in to have two antennas due to TVNZ (our BBC equivalent) broadcasting on VHF ch 1+3 from one site and the commercial operators (our ITV equivalent) broadcasting from a completely different site but on higher VHF channels. There many people would have VHF-I antennas pointing towards the TVNZ site and VHF-III towards the TV3/4 site. Another example is where the main site broadcasted all four analogue channels (back in the day) but the relays only did 1-2 channels, sometimes you would find two antennas -- one for the relay to get the best pictures for the channels it did carry and another for the main station if they really wanted to watch show not carried by the relay!
Probably due to pre digital viewing. Whereby, another transmitter could be picked up, for different programming. Usually sports, films etc were shown on one transmitter but not another. Example being that here in Wrexham, we can use Winter Hill, The Wrekin, Sutton Coldfield and Wrexham Rhos.
Pre digital, the English transmitters had Channel 4 and Channel 5. Whereas, the Welsh ones carried S4C. Some sports/films were shown on the different regional variations of BBC, ITV etc. now it’s all digital, you can get the same channels everywhere you go (apart from Freeview Light transmitters) like the Broadbottom one mentioned in the video. Where you only get the main three multiplexes.
Come to Wirksworth, about 25 miles further south! We face north to the Bolehill repeater for the East Midlands, others point to Sutton Coldfield for the West Midlands.
I've been right up to Winter Hill Transmitter it's a proper trek to get to but the views up there are stunning
Very informative Lewis 👌
Looking forward to the police radio system video as well
Thanks so much as always Daniel!
When I lived in Cyprus under certain weather conditions we could receive TV programs from Egypt , Libya and the Lebanon, four episodes of Bonanza in one evening. Love your video, info and scenery.
You haven't lived until you've gotten drunk and watched Battlestar Galactica dubbed in German, subtitled in Croatian, in glorious black and white in a hotel room in Zagreb!
@spaceflight1019, that's enough to make a guy go on the wagon.
I knew a guy whose small community was near the beach, on the wrong side of a hill from the TV transmission tower. The community's developer decided to do what was fashionable then, and install a relay tower that received the analog TV signals and sent them down pre-installed coaxial cable to all the homes. Homeowners would then pay a monthly fee for access.
Until one day, the developer went bankrupt and the coaxial cables went dead.
The residents association took over the relay with the help of a technically-minded local resident, but the signal that reached the houses was pretty rubbish. I think they realized that they had no hope of supporting the repairs of decoder boxes, so this was never going to be a long-term solution. Fortunately, analog TV was being phased out and the government gave grants to people in this community to have satellite dishes installed instead.
I'm from Mottram next door to Broadbottom (or rather top o' th' hill) and it's lovely to see some drone footage of my local area! Excellent and informative video as ever, thanks.
I used to live in Didcot Oxfordshire, starting in the 70's we had 3 antennas on our roof pointing in different directions, coming down to a couple of switches, our best reception was midlands TV (now central), but we had the option of getting London or Southernn TV, though sometimes a litle more grainy, several programmes were regional, so it was a way to get alternatives, this was before Sky TV was poplular.
It was the same where I lived in Anglia. Many people had one antenna for Anglia Tv and one for London ITV.
Another informative video Lewis 👍 Many years ago when I was on my YTS at Radio Rentals; a lot of the homes in Lincoln would point their aerials towards Midlands (ATV, Central) from the Waltham transmitter rather than Yorkshire from the Belmont transmitter. This was because building work at the County Hospital was enough to scupper the signal. Even now, I have a wideband aerial to enable Freeview reception from both sites for the main telly and if I use one of those "super powerful, high quality" aerials from that well known auction site; I still can't get a signal from Belmont in the back room; but can get a weak signal from somewhere over Sheffield way.
That also reminds me of Hunstanton, in Norfolk. Despite being in the East Anglia region, the strongest signals come from straight across The Wash, from the Belmont transmitter - although I have seen a few aerials that are possibly Waltham?
Even the Sandringham repeater mast is not used that much, and in areas where I have seen aerials on the Sandringham mast, there have also been aerials on other main masts (probably Belmont).
Lots of houses in my town have two aerials. We can receive signals from Wenvoe and Mendip. It was worth having both as you could then pickup Welsh and Bristol regional programming. It was great being able to choose between S4C and Channel 4 before digital TV came along.
The feeds coming in from fibre - it’s probably a question for the TV signals using digital modulation using SFNs (single frequency networks), where the digital coding is “slow” (in electronics terms) and can be retransmitted on the same frequency channel, without negative reinforcement.
But the key is to avoid “mush zones” because you still want to synchronise the timing as much as possible - multipath interference is still your enemy. Even though the DVB system using COFDM (instead of VSB like the Americans’ ATSC v1.0) it’s still possible to get reflections off steep hills, objects and aircraft, so you want to help the receiver decoder as much as possible and avoid temporal offset.
In home computing terms, COFDM is like a low baud rate carrier signal with a high symbol complexity, so imagine a choir of singers changing their harmony of notes every 2 seconds, as opposed to a solo singer changing notes every 0.5 seconds.
Back in the late 1990s the Americans argued with themselves about abandoning VSB (vestigial sideband) for their digital modulation in favour of the European choice, and they came close to doing it after launch, which is saying something for them (though anyone with a long memory may note they abandoned CBS’s colour TV standard after official ratification in 1950). The VSB broadcasts have been plagued, or were in the early days, with reflections off buildings, particularly in dense cities. They partially solved it with more complex demodulator hardware for the customer, but the permanent fix came with ATSC 2.0, which went for COFDM.
Of course, never one to miss an opportunity for commercial spoils, they quickly replaced that with ATSC 3.0 before it ever got started, and loaded it up with DRM and audience tracking. Sigh, it’s now stillborn … and engineers have found that most TVs can receive AVC and HEVC on the old modulation ATSC 1.0, achieving 4K HDR that way. Meanwhile, LG have stopped manufacturing ATSC 3.0 tuners in new TVs because the patents are crazy and everyone is being sued left right & centre.
That helps explain why poor DVB signal can be fixed by chaining amplifiers/“signal boosters” together; while ATSC generally can’t. Fascinating they had a failed 2.0 and 3.0 which would’ve worked better.
When I was a kid where my mate lived in Chesterfield he could get Yorkshire and Central ITV depending whether the gasometer nearby was up or down. One used to show some programs later than the other, so if I had missed the start of something I could nip round to his house.
I enjoyed that deep dive
Probably more so than the 3 passengers that stepped off the train!!
Reminds me of here on the east coast of Australia before 1990 when the tv market was opened up . In Newcastle we could only get 2 stations unless you lived on a hill or put up a 40 ft mast with stacked array to get 3 more stations from Sydney , people who had hills in the way sometimes put up masts to get the station from Taree which is about 100 km north but had to change from horizontal to vertical signal
So why do the antennas point in opposite directions? I watched the video once, but either it wasn't explained or i didn't understand, or i forgot.
I receive Winter Hill, here in Wrexham. My log periodic tv aerial points to North West. As the Wrexham transmitter only carries the three main Freeview multiplexes.
Nice video. I’m in the states. I have similar terrain in Tennessee. One station added several relays. Where I live it’s common to need a very large antenna. Horizontal polarization, 68 miles or 109 km away.
My dad would have loved this video as he was from nearby Hattersley. As a kid I had a fascination with trains, and he used to show me pictures of that very viaduct. I wonder what transmitter the residents of Hattersley are tuned to.
It's the same here some face south to rumster forest, others face north to Orkney isles, there was a feeeview light relay in town but been years
Same in my town, I have 4 antennas, 2 vertical and 2 horizontal pointing different directions. The local TV signals are dictated by the weather so need two sets of antennas to pick up two different transmitters.
I live in Nottingham, but find your videos so well researched, educational and entertaining that I have to watch.
We had the same sort of thing in my area at the start of Freeview. The local transmitter just see the tip of it from the bottom of the roof line. Had some Freeview show's but to get all had to move the aerial's a lot more higher-up for the main transmitter about 17 mile's out.
Are most broadcast sites difficult to obtain info on? It seems more difficult than here in the states
It's The Same Here In Aberystwyth Valley , Yagi's Facing Opposite Directions
Bless Up Fella
So good to hear about the rooftop antenna positioning, brings back memories of my dad having to go adjust them on our roof in the 60s. It helped us learn real-life science and tech (and first aid).
I see this in some parts of Dukinfield. Most of the town has a clear view of Winter Hill, but there was once a huge Victorian Mill on the site where Morrison's now stands. Because of the mill blocking the Winter Hill signal in that area, many homes had their aerials pointing north towards the Saddleworth relay (vertically polarised). Even though the mill is long gone, lazy aerial erectors still put up aerials pointing at the relay, probably because they know nowt and it's easier just to do a 'carbon copy' install.
I'm also guilty of looking for antennas while driving. Also seeing some objects I wonder if I could you that as an antenna?
Curious, are tv antennas always vertically polarized in the UK?
Here on the other side of the pond all our tv antennas are horizontally polarized
Depends on the transmitter in the area. Some are horizontal, some are vertical.
It is very common for houses here in NI to have two UHF antennas pointing different directions. One for Freeview and one for Saorview.
In my area it is Divis transmitter for Freeview and for the most part Clermont Carn for Saorview. Although the specific location of our house we actually get much better Saorview reception from Kippure transmitter despite it being twice as far away from us as Clermont Carn. This is due to The Mournes largely blocking Clermont Carn for us.
Some houses also still have an old VHF band 3 antenna pointed at Kippure as VHF transmissions of RTÉ 1 & 2 from there only stopped with the digital switchover, much later than VHF band 3 stopped being used for TV broadcasts in the UK.
I have always been interested in this and always look up to the rooftops everywhere I go.
Our village is near the boundary between the East and West Midlands and is served by two transmitters at Waltham and Sutton Coldfield in opposite directions. I would say that about 50% of the aerials face in each direction and gain almost equal power output signals from both transmitters. Which one you go for depends on whether you class yourself as an East or West Midlander as it only really affects the local news programmes.
Kind of similar for me in Sawley, near East Midlands Airport (In Derbyshire, but also got Nottingham and Leicester as Neighbours, and Staffordshire not far either), in that in days of old, we used Sutton Coldfield and sometimes still do to this day, although Waltham and it's relay at Kimberly, Nottingham, is our main transmitter.
Ha! Here in Rhode Island in the USA we use two antenna pointing about 120 degrees apart to pick up different transmitters in and out of state. Gets us a total of about 50 digital "over the air" TV channels. About 3 are actually worth watching - but 2 are on one transmitter and one on the other so you need two antenna. I say "about" 50 as it tends to vary a little with the signal absorbing humdity and foliage.
At our summerhouse (Sweden) previously before digital TV entered the arena, our antenna was REALLY pointing the wrong direction.
I mean it - the opposite direction of the transmitter (a relay station BTW).
That one you all can think about. =)
Similar story in my village. We are spitting distance off Bilsdale and some in the village could hang a bit of damp string out of their window and get a perfect signal where many of us are using Emley Moor and need boosters or high gain antennas for decent signal.
The 'white stick' antennas are simply four (usually - can be more) stacked dipoles inside the tube. Should be about the same performance as the loop antennas with a slightly different patterns (in general, dipoles will have a larger main lobe while loops side lobes will be larger). Of course, it all depends on the wavelength of the dipole, too.
It’s pretty much the way a repeater works. It receives the signal on one frequency and retransmits it on another extending the range of the client transmitter “your radio”.
Same issue with my home town in worcestershire, nestled in the Severn Valley. In some parts of town the signal from Sutton Coldfield is easier to pick up, and in others the Malvern repeater is easier. There is a major problem with 'ghosting' too, this is the problem with the hill on the other side of the valley bouncing back a delayed signal.
My father fitted a high mast with double antenna and still suffered with a poor picture. Back in the 70's my father decided to knock down the wall dividing the lounge and dining room, this wall had a double chimney breast, and the antenna was mounted on the chimney, so as a temporary measure we hung a small antenna on a nail in the loft. The attenuation of the signal by the timber and slate gave us the best picture we'd had in years, and the antenna is probably still hanging on the nail to this day!
As a ham radio operator and Meshtastic enthusiast, I love your videos. Thanks for sharing.
I love all the airplanes in your shots. Nice touch.
Thanks for noticing
Brilliant stuff as always, yes I would like to see more.
Also it would be cool to cover HAN so we can work out what sites have the gateways ect for smart meters.
In Taunton (Deane), Somerset we had two transmitters, Stockland on the Blackdown Hills and Mendip above Wells. Stockland broadcast the Westward Programmes coming from Plymouth whilst broadcast HTV West/Wales. My father obtained a switch which switched between the two (no remotes, one had to get off ones ar*se and push the buttons). In our case a TV rented off Radio Rentals.
Loving the aircraft which just so happen to be passing overhead
Fly into Ringway and you'll often be flying over there.
Not only are radio geeks, we are antenna geeks, too!
You get the same problem right in the centre of Manchester, not due to geography but due to buildings like Sunley / City Tower cresting a barrier to Winter Hill. Try and do an unfiltered Freeview scan from an aerial on the roof of the Mercure hotel, and it will lock to Moel-y-Parc and give you Welsh channels regardless of where you point the aerial.
My grandmother had her TV antennas like that. One pointing East to get KHQA-TV and WGEM-TV in Quincy, IL, and one pointing South for KOMU-TV and KRCG-TV. One little UHF antenna for KMIZ-TV. As of 2019 they still worked, though the mast has been bent down a bit, due to all the VHF stations still being on VHF (KOMU and KRCG moved to UHF after this, not sure of KHQA and WGEM.) Cheers! K0CBS. EDIT: When KTVO-TV Kirksville got their new tower in the 80's, she got them off the backside of the South facing antenna with a great clear picture. KTVO has a major tower collapse not too long after it went on the air with it that took the lives of the tower crew trying to fix a fault in the tower.
3 or 4 years ago I visited a friend on a small estate in Spain, just down from Benidorm. All the houses had small dish aerials with a long thin LNB, and what appeared to be a small glowing red LED. Many hours spent soaking up the sun and looking up.....sad really!
Before the wall came down, the Stasi would reward loyal East Germans who would report their fellow Berlin neighbors for having their TV antennas pointed towards the decadent West and not the German Democratic Republic in the East.
Any source for that happening in the 80s? That's the time "before the wall came down" and the time I remember. In my place you'd officially form and register a club with the people in the house (or even village) to improve national (read: east german) and international (understand: west german) TV reception. Massive Yagi groups (4x20+ elements for UHF) with purpose built pre-amps where the norm and usually cost was shared with the neighbours in said clubs. I keep reading about "antennas in the wrong direction" being removed in the 60s, no own experience, wasn't born then.
@@thes764 If I recall correctly even TV tuners in the Eastern Bloc were hardlocked into Eastern Europe frequencies, so to receive Western broadcasts you had to modify the tuner.
and the teachers would say 'Did anyone watch Bugs Bunny last night?'
@@jimbotron70 You recall incorrectly. Not only were the TV bands identical in east and west Germany. The East German colour TVs even decoded the western PAL signal, in addition to the eastern SECAM. I used one through most of the 90s. Only things it was missing was a remote and extended cable TV channels, both of which I worked around by hooking it up to a VCR. I wonder what part of the eastern bloc you remember...
The east was bad enough as it actually was, no need to make things up.
@@thes764 This is what I've read at the time, I never lived in the Eastern Bloc.
I've always had a passing interest in the local TV transmitting network here in Sawley, Derbyshire, the main transmitting point for us, being Waltham, Leicestershire.
We do sometimes use a relay located at Kimberly, Nottinghamshire (Nearby Eastwood, Nottinghamshire is also an interesting relay, where my mate lives) in the Long Eaton / Sawley area, however in days before Waltham, we also used Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands, and to this day still use this, which was the case at my old place, as one of the bedrooms made it difficult to use Waltham.
I have been able to get broadcasts from one of the Emley Moor relays (Likely Chesterfield, Derbyshire) before, weather dependant, which is fascinating considering Emley Moor is in Huddersfield, and I'm just up the road from East Midlands Airport.
So many airplanes, so many aerials. Top notch info 👍👍🏴🏴
Your channel could be played in classrooms, I learn more than i thought I would and am beyond impressed with everything.
I pointed my t.v. aerial away from Winter Hill to get a better signal from the Mossley relay station.
But Channel 5 wasn't operational at that time I had a t.v.
No t.v. now for 24 years.
8:56 the satellite dish will probably be for downlinking the DAB transport feed for 12B and 11D.
Another great video Lewis. I always knew those towers on Werneth Low were to get the emergency services over that hill back in the 80s/90s. I'm surprised they didn't include TV and radio as well either then or now.
When I was a kid (and everything was analogue) if your UHF antenna pointed south west you got Thames/London Weekend ITV from Ally Pally and if it pointed north east you got Anglia Television ITV from Mendlesham transmitting station. BBC2 (which had started on UHF) wasn't regionalised so it didn't matter which direction you were looking and when BBC1 went from VHF to UHF two years later, allowing you to use only one antenna, the only regionalisation you really noticed was whether you got _London & SE_ or _BBC Look East east_ for the news segments.
This isn't in my region but always find your factual and historical videos fascinating. Thanks Lewis.
We had 2 aerials pointing in different directions, on picked up bbc wales htv wales and s4c. The other was bbc west, htv west and channel 4
4:10 when 300 people photobomb your antenna video
Thank you,Lewis, for a very informative video. May I also say thank you for the pieces of railway history, regarding the bridges or viaducts...
I learned from you today, so thank you 😊
Some beautiful shots in this one and great music.
Just discovered TH-cam unsubscribed me, how very dare it! Fascinating video, I live in High Lane and work near Chorley, so am very familiar with the whole area, I love finding out all this stuff!
before we went digital, l had 2 antennas , normal one and one so l could get HTV and S4C, l lived in Liverpool.
Thanks
Thank you so much!
Many aerials in Flintshire, particularly in the flatter south and on the coast, still point towards the River Dee, resulting in reception of Granada as reception of the reasonably expected HTV etc. from Moel-y-Parc in northern Flintshire was usually poorer. This practice also resulted in Channel 4 programming being available without any delay; before 2010, S4C would only sometimes simulcast it. I was about 9 when I started watching HTV regularly, because Sky ─ who’d only just put ITV1 on the platform ─ only took my postcode into account and not local practice! I do remember Granada briefly being available on Sky 963 in the early 2000s, however, which required very careful use of the remote, as you might imagine! It’s interesting to see a similar kind of thing happen in North West England itself. Thank you for yet another great video!
Of course there are many places that have antenna pointing in multiple directions to get different regions, either because they want a different region, better reception or back in the day different regions could have vastly different schedules and some networked programmes could be shown a fair bit later on some franchises. Yeovil and Portland are some places where different households want different regions, West or Westcountry/South West in Yeovil's case and Westcountry/South West and South in Portland's case (Stockland Hill/Rowridge).
Interestingly some relays have RBL antenna pointing in different directions, originally that would be because the BBC and ITV had different ideas as to what area a relay should be in but now it can be for a different feed if the main one is unusable for some reason, some main stations even had different regions from different parts of it's main antenna if two different areas needed covering, like Selkirk.
A for a backup/RBS link the Weymouth relay in Wyke Regis has two low down trough RBL antennas facing Stockland Hill and a new log periodic antenna facing another relay, Bincome Hill, on the other side of the Weymouth area, this is a back-up to the main feed presumably due to the mainly sea path of the signal from Stockland Hill which can be subject to tidal fading whereas the Bincome Hill transmitter does not have a sea-path for it's RBL.
nice film...beautiful area
There are plenty of chains of relays around the country. Most notably in Wales where the signals get carried up the valleys. All are relays in their own right with few exceptions. Notably Biggin Hill which relays from Crystal Palace to Kenley isn't intended for customer reception. That dish near the end is for BBC DAB distribution. All BBC DAB sites will have that. DAB, being an SFN requires all transmitters to transmit at the same time (almost ;-) ) so sat distribution is the easiest way to ensure all the transmitters have the signal ready to go.
I used to like seeing the BBC World Service short wave transmitting station at Rampisham Down in Dorset. The curtain dipole arrays and pylons were quite fascinating but unfortunately it was all taken down in 2011.
I dont have a TV antenna on my roof........since free to air TV is like drinking out of a toilet bowl. All I need is the internet and real informative content like Ringway Manchester.
I put up tv aerials for a living and I completely agree , licence free for 3 years . I also look at aerials when I don't need to.
Agreed. Only boomers and the mentally ill are still watching TV 😂
@@MattyEngland Only the mentally ill, and some children, still say 'Boomers'.
@@MattyEnglandI agree I'm mentally ill! Watching wheel of fortune and Benny hill caused it!!!😂
@@oldbatwit5102 It's a very common phrase to describe people who refuse to take up new technology. :) It's even reached as far as my country, New Zealand! "OK, boomer" is a common response when older people try and enforce their old ways.
Why does my sky dish point directly at a building with an antenna on it? I was told by a sky engineer that we get tv signals from satellites!
Nice locations for a day out geeking and pretty pretty camera work ❤
This reminds me of when Channel 5 started out.
Channel 5 coverage was pretty low when it came out, and where I live we werent going to get it for our transmitter
But then a transmitter further away was going to get it.
I was lucky to have a small TV in my bedroom, so I decided to see if I could receive the signal.
Took a new internal antenna and a booster, and I only just got a signal!
It was bad, a snowy image and I would lose the signal regularly.
But as Channel 5 was showing a lot of really new movies to attract viewers, it was worth it.
But if anyone wanted to watch Channel 5, it would have to be from my bedroom.
Only one way to adjust antenna . When the TV received the clearest picture or highest strength on the meter .
Excellent video, thanks. The viaducts were a nice touch too
Got that on my house in sussex.
Pop down to Alport Heights near Matlock. There's some grand antennae down here 😊
It’s on my list :)
When I lived in West Malling, our ariel pointed the wrong way. It meant we could pick up Carlton and Meridian. Always had a grainy image on channel 4. Alot of people were unaware of the cable that ran all around the estate. My guess was channel 4 was the reason. I wondered who paid for the installation, maintenance and power. I'm guessing that's what the big green metal boxes on the shed roofs were for. As far as I'm aware, their never was cable TV in the area. This was in the 80s and 90s, maybe even later.
I really enjoyed the radio tower analysis. I find this sort of thing interesting.
Its the same here in mid Wales , i just assumed people were relying on signal bounce .
Do the different transmitters work on slightly different frequencies? If not don’t the Ariel’s that have LOS to two towers get two ever so slightly out of time signals?