Northampton's Absolute Radio 1233MW frequency issue
CraigSteele2001
Posts: 971 Forum Member
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For the past week the 1233 MW output of Absolute Radio has had an annoying distorted sound on it together with a loud buzzing noise.
I emailed Arqiva about it and they said they were going to send an engineer out to look at the problem.
I emailed Arqiva to chase up the email, I sent because the fault is still there and I've had this reply:
Craig
Our engineers have visited this site, and found no fault in the broadcast system with clear reception to a distance of at least 40 miles as they drove to site.
I am sorry we can offer no advice as to why your reception may be less than ideal, but are satisfied the broadcast site is operating efficiently.
Yours sincerely
Angela
I emailed Arqiva about it and they said they were going to send an engineer out to look at the problem.
I emailed Arqiva to chase up the email, I sent because the fault is still there and I've had this reply:
Craig
Our engineers have visited this site, and found no fault in the broadcast system with clear reception to a distance of at least 40 miles as they drove to site.
I am sorry we can offer no advice as to why your reception may be less than ideal, but are satisfied the broadcast site is operating efficiently.
Yours sincerely
Angela
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Comments
I am probably too far, 40+ miles away to be able to hear that frequency clearly.
Interesting though, none the less.
Yes I have tried it on a personal walkman indoors and outdoors, and on a portable small kitchen radio and the problem is there.
I only live 0.88 miles from the transmitter so it isn't that I live far away to gain interference from nearby.
Being so close to the transmitter, I would have thought it would be 'blowing the windows out' with signal, so the distortion that you mention must be a problem with the said transmitter, I would have thought.
There are plenty of users in this forum who are way more qualified than me to comment about the tech stuff, maybe someone will contribute with other ideas later on?
Puzzling stuff.
It has been bassy since a fault earlier in the year which as it is now, never got fixed
Arqiva are not a public facing organisation, unlike the previous pre privatisation IBA.
They are a service provider for broadcasters. Any compliant about the quality of transmission should be directed at the broadcaster (in this case Absolute Radio). They
will pursue the matter with Arqiva, it's those two parties that have a contractual agreement. Perhaps the woman from Arqiva was just being helpful, perhaps not, the very fact you had to chase up an answer does rather indicate they might have been politely palming you off. To get this solved, you need to engage with one of Absolute's engineers, and let them engage with Arqiva.
Try a car radio driving in your area.
Or take a radio with you and walk around your neighbourhood.
If the problem is in your house there you have got some sort of interference within your house/very close by.
Things like tv pre-amps can cause problems so has your neighbour had any tv antenna work recently? Maybe you have bought a new cordless home(landline)phone? There could be several things causing it.The trouble is finding it but your first action would be to see if you experience the problem away from your house.
I used to live 12 Miles from Northampton and 1215 was very mushy with constant fading in and out.
Unlikely, otherwise there wouldn't be any need for the 1233 filler there ?
No. It's a mixture of signals from Droitwich and Brookmans Park.
There's nothing wrong with the frequency, it's just that since September 1967 it's
been used as a national SFN, with sites that are too close together, and therefore lots of overlap 'mush zones'.
Originally the Beeb had planned to use 1151 kHz (1152 in new money) in addition to 1214,
so half the sites would have carried Radio 1 on 1151, but in the 1972 Sound Broadcasting Act the BBC lost that frequency to the IBA for ILR use. The rest is history
The quality seems to have gone back to how it used to be months ago.