Poor / no signal Crystal Palace daytime today
barclay55
Posts: 514 Forum Member
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Anyone else have no signal today?
Ok I am Essex beyond M25 but not as far as Southend and my aerial is temporary and indoors, but normally BBC1 I would get a 43% signal 100% quality. Daytime today Monday 8th Dec I was getting 19% signal obv 0% quality = no signal
Crystal Palace is flagged as 'Possible service interruptions' for 8/12/14 on
http://www.digitaluk.co.uk/help_and_advice/engineering_works
so I guess thats self explanatory.
Ok I am Essex beyond M25 but not as far as Southend and my aerial is temporary and indoors, but normally BBC1 I would get a 43% signal 100% quality. Daytime today Monday 8th Dec I was getting 19% signal obv 0% quality = no signal
Crystal Palace is flagged as 'Possible service interruptions' for 8/12/14 on
http://www.digitaluk.co.uk/help_and_advice/engineering_works
so I guess thats self explanatory.
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The name of the transmitter is the Crystal Palace transmitter, it was built where the palace was
The Crystal Palace Transmitter which is what is being referred to here is a blink and you wont miss it structure, adjacent to the old Crystal Palace site. It was the tallest structure in London until 1991, its now the fifth tallest.
The late 19th century.
The prominence of the building lead to that part of Sydenham Hill becoming known as Crystal Palace in general. Then as London built up and it became an area in its own right rather than fringes of others the name extended to cover parts of Upper Norwood and other neighbouring areas.
Although the exact location of where Crystal Palace begins and those surrounding areas such as Anerley and Gipsy Hill end are not clearly defined, it is now is the main name in general use for that area.
And despite having a clearly defined centre (the Crystal Palace Triangle) it is located at the intersection of the boroughs of Lambeth, Southwark, Croydon, and Bromley. Which were traditionally in the counties of London (both as Camberwell which became part of Southwark and Lambeth), Surrey, and Kent respectively. So the names of those original neighbourhoods within different boroughs and counties made no sense to what is now known as Crystal Palace.
Possibly on reduced power with occasional outages. I don't know whether Crystal Palace still uses Croydon as a back up if it is off air like it used to in the analogue days but it would certainly be a reason for poor signal or no signal at all in some areas as its signal strength would be much lower than that of Crystal Palace.
You certainly won't miss it, especially as there is a similar transmitter structure adjacent to it on Beulah Hill in Croydon!
The transmitters are in the buildings at the bottom of the mast, you don't put transmitters on the structure that supports the aerials.The station opened in 1956 succeeding Alexandra Palace which had been in use since 1936. In 1964 aerials were added for BBC2 UHF and in 1969 for BBC1 and ITV in colour and later for C4.C5 comes from the old ITA site at Croydon.
Croydon a couple of weeks ago had its UHF Tx aerials swapped out, by a helicoptor lift.
http://www.tbnn.co.uk/news/helicopter-delivers-new-antenna-structure-london/
So they seem to have replaced the standby DTT aerials there. At some point they would have required testing, to determine performance, and the only way to that would have been to shut down Crystal Palace, and transmit from Croydon, so perhaps that's what happened ?
It did (C5 analogue), but not since DSO of course.
Duplicated transmitters so no power reduction occurs (nor permitted by contract!)
Main and Reserve antennas are at pretty similar heights and (since digital switchover) similar radiation patterns so almost no difference in power either... except perhaps extreme fringes where the height may make a difference.
Switching breaks could occur... almost imperceptible if transmitters only but IF reserve antennas brought into play may take a few seconds to do. Maybe slightly longer breaks IF Arqiva are doing some other works involving re-engineering of the site... but the contracts won't allow anything significant time-wise without penalties.
Croydon probably still a disaster recovery reserve of the site... but that would mean CP transmitter halls were on fire or the tower had fallen down.
Room aerials are notoriously unreliable and any change in the near locality can give reception difficulties... perhaps a neighbour has dressed their tree in metallic foil between the OPs room antenna and the transmitter?
EDIT: Cross-post issue!!!
OOH.... Mark C may well have the answer! In the good old days BBC Reception Advice would have made an announcement... Coverage from Croydon would be significantly different, of course,
Perhaps the OP can confirm all is now good (again)?
Crystal Palace Park is a lovely place to walk round and you can get very close to the transmitter 😄
It is not done in the UK but common in many other countries. Many years ago I was taken to see the TV transmitters at Lopik, about 400 ft up the tower. Though I suppose a pedant could say that 'the structure that supports the aerials' is above the main part of the tower.
Though digital TV, like DAB, is more robust than analogue so will often work on a 'room antenna'. In the early days of DTT I took a STB up to a friend's house to demonstrate it, we got perfectly good pictures on all MUXes with just his finger on the antenna socket (obviously in a room).
I know. I meant the structure *at* the transmitter, not *for* the transmitters. My term "transmitter tower" means both "tower at the transmitter" and "tower for supporting the transmitting aerials". I could have typed either if you wanted to be so picky.
The DAB and local radio transmitters are housed at the top of the mast at Emley, but
that's the only UK case I can think of. Of course they are physically much smaller than the high power TV transmitters, that are in the building on the ground, like every other site.