Why is a ATU needed .
Am I missing something ?

As well as CH 39 (TV Noord Holland) MUX coming in strongly, the TV West Mux (CH52) is powering in, as is the Utrecht Mux (CH50), the TV Noord Mux (CH 46), and the TV Gelderland Mux (CH 42). The ITV Anglia West Runton Mux CH23, which is in the same direction isn't being received, indicating that the tropo is longer range. Also, the fact that Gelderland is receivable indicates that too.

Is anyone else having a good DX evening?

Hi Jon, I received the TV West mux yesterday whilst staying at a house on the dunes overlooking the sea in Winterton Norfolk. The weather was awful and the aerial horizontal and facing inland, despite this though I had perfect reception all day plus mobile phone carriers from the Netherlands and Belgium.

Hi Alex,

Damn I didn't check yesterday. TV West is at CH 52 and romps in here usually, CH 39 (Noord Holland) would probably have been receivable too, they tend to come in together. I can get these in for 2 or 3 days at a time in the summer uninterrupted when there is a good lift on. I was distracted because I took delivery of an Onkyo T9990 tuner from Germany a few days ago and was doing a bit of FM DXing. I have never received mobile phone networks from Holland, so that is quite a catch! I don't think you would have been able to connect to it on your phone via roaming though, I remember reading something about this a few years ago, and there was a technical reason to do with the return path length being too long to sync (if I recall correctly) but KUDOS to you for the catch.

Regards

Jon

Thanks for posting.

Thanks for the info. I did wonder about the possibility of connecting to it via roaming but was just happy at the time to see them listed on my phone. You are probably right though it wouldn't have been possible to text or make a call. However I think there have been issues in the south where people have accidentally roamed into French networks during tropos. Anyway good to get some TV Dx, the first I've had since Germany in 2013. Let's hope for some good conditions this summer.

It is perfectly possible to roam on to French networks in the Dover area though you have to manually do it if your home network is available because that will take precedence. When you get further away, say somewhere like the Isle of Wight, on high ground or in a lift you can see the French, or even Channel Islands, networks but roaming on to them invariably fails though I did once receive a "Welcome to France text" on Isle of Wight. Once down there out of range of my home network I received a "You have joined a maritime network, calls will cost etc" text as a large ship went by close to the coast.

Very interesting, thanks for the info.

Not atmospheric conditions as such but I thought I'd share this.

Going on holiday next week on a Mediterranean cruise, and planning to take my small 11.6" laptop with PCTV Nano 290e DVB-T2 USB stick to do a bit of TV scanning in ports.

I got one of those SLX log periodic-style indoor aerials that can be rotated either horizontally or vertically, and I've just been testing the set-up out here at home in Worcester to see how good it is.

For a tiny indoor aerial I'm actually really impressed with it. We live on the north side of the city with high ground directly to the South (we get Sutton Coldfield freeview rather than Malvern which is behind the hill, and the Gloucester radio stations on 104.7/102.4 lose to the adjacent channel stuff from Kidderminster/Stourbridge on 104.6/102.5). With that in mind I've just been picking up a shaky but decodable signal in the upstairs South facing bedroom of Mendip BBC A on channel 49; no booster or anything, just the SLX antenna! https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...A%20Mendip.png

The Digital UK postcode checker doesn't even suggest Mendip as an option for any muxes!

The other good thing about the SLX antenna is that it will fold flat so will be easy to fit in luggage in its box.

On another note, Channel 49 from Mendip travels a good long way. It comes in fine most of the time on the Stockland Hill-facing log periodic at my parents' place in Brixham, Devon (pretty much exactly the same bearing as Stockland), and I'd imagine with a more substantial rooftop antenna it'd be receivable fine here on the North side of Worcester too.

Mendip goes forever and ever, a bit like my local, Belmont.

Looking forwards to hearing about your catches from the cruise. I don't know if you are going anywhere near Cyprus(?), if you do, look out for Syria. Back in the analogue days, I was in a department store in Nicossia and all of the TVs were tuned into a DX signal from Syria. Given that it wasn't on just a single TV, but on all of them, I am guessing that Syria must be a regular visitor, for someone to have gone to the trouble of tuning all of the TVs in (or perhaps one of the workers there was a it of a sad geek like me ).

I found a 1974 listing for Syria here http://www.americanradiohistory.com/...IS-1974-P4.pdf
Aleppo - E5 30Kw
El Sheikh Oaher - E9 180Kw
Damascus - E5 150Kw
Homs - E7 30Kw

Not being familiar with that part of the world, I don't know which of those would have been possible in Cyprus.

It's going to be a Western Mediterranean cruise (Italy, France, Mallorca and Malta) so I'm especially interested in seeing Maltese DVB-T. Apparently it's on E66 - I can't find any information about the digital dividend having happened there so I assume that's still the case.

With regard to Cyprus, I was there in 2007 and had an analogue portable TV that I got from Carrefour there. I remember picking up Syrian TV strongly on both Band I and Band III if I'm right. Back then there were two different channels I think but I don't know what there is now. This was in Protaras.

I could also get TRT 1 on VHF III; I don't know whether that was from Northern Cyprus or mainland Turkey. The FM band was jam packed with Turkish stations from the Adana area, and some Lebanese stations could also be heard (only going by RDS here, I guess Syrian stations were audible too).

In Malta my bet would be Italy (Sicily) and possibly Tunisia would be possible and, you never know, if you get a lift Libya. More generally it would interesting (well at least to a sad geek like me) to see just how far out into the Med the UHF signals actually reach.

I found this link -> http://www.mds975.co.uk/masts/malta01.html

It has TV and FM frequencies for Malta.

Hope that helps.

I'm on the other side of the hill and Mendip is just as strong as the local Malvern TX on a horizontally polarised aerial

That's interesting thanks!

Just found this as well: https://sites.google.com/site/litali...altaindigitale

There's an HD Multiplex with TVM and TVM2 in HD on VHF Band III, and 8 encrypted multiplexes in UHF for the Go package as well as the FTA SD channels on E66.

That's interesting to know! When we were looking at houses on that side of town I was wondering about the viability of using Mendip rather than Malvern to get the extra HD channels, I guess it depends on whether you can null out the co-channel Sutton Coldfield version though (they're both on channel 33). We get them fine from Sutton here without any interference from Mendip.

Reception here isn't brilliant anyway. We have a large B group antenna to feed two TVs, and even with a masthead amp before the splitter, we get break-up now and again. Sutton is nominally stronger than the Bromsgrove/Lark Stoke/Wrekin SFN, but there are aerials on all three of those on our road (along with a majority on Sutton)!

COM7 is fine, COM8 is slightly lower in signal strength but I cannot get a solid lock on their local mux, I suspect if I added an amp or aligned my aerial properly I would have a better chance

Can you get anything from Wenvoe with your Mendip aerial?

I'm just thinking that the Cardiff local MUX from Wenvoe and the Bristol local MUX from Mendip are co-channel (both E51), and Wenvoe isn't that much off beam compared to Mendip when looking at it from Worcester. Maybe that's why you can't get it.

Yes I do, not enough to lock but it shows around 25% on the TV. Thanks for that, explains why I cant get a lock!

Wenvoe FM is certainly audible here, plus on the high ground on the path next to Woodgreen Drive towards the hospital, I can pick up South East Wales DAB on a handheld DAB radio which I guess is probably a mixture of Mendip and Wenvoe.

We can get the Birmingham local mux on E51 from Sutton Coldfield here. The only mux that seems to cause a bit of trouble is the BBC B HD one on E40, but I can't find any likely source of CCI. COM7 is actually a bit stronger even with the co-channel from Mendip.

Well that ended up very interesting! Aside from a lovely holiday I managed to get plenty of DVB-T multiplex full TS snippets recorded onto my laptop.

I got all 8 French multiplexes logged from Marseille - when the ship moored I could see the transmitter on L'île de Pomègues from the cabin window so the signal was 100% for everything. French DVB-T picture quality really is much better than ours.

In Palma de Mallorca I picked up various stations but as I've documented lots of Spanish DVB-T before I was mainly interested in getting recordings of the regional IB3 multiplex as well as TVE Illes Balears (La 1, La 2, 24h, Clan, La 1 HD).

On the way past the south coast of Sardinia (we past it at about 10 miles from the coast), I got recordings of Rai Mux.2 (Rai Sport 1, Rai Sport 2, TV2000, Rai Scuola), Rai Mux.3 (Rai 4, Rai YoYo, Rai Premium, Rai Gulp, Rai Movie), Rai Mux.4 (Rai 5, Rai HD, Rai Storia), and Mediaset La 3 (Rete 4 HD, Canale 5 HD, Italia 1 HD) as well as just about reception of Rai Mux.1 Sardegna (Rai 1, Rai 2, Rai 3 TGR Sardegna, Rai News 24) on VHF E09 even though the small antenna seemed to struggle with VHF Band III a little as it's designed for UHF.

Malta was the most interesting as I got a perfect recording of the main FTA Mux on E66 with TVM, TVM2, Smash, NET, One, f Living, and Xejk as well as a nearly perfect recording (with just one blip) of TVM HD and TVM 2 HD on VHF E05. Malta's main news on TVM seemed to be in pretty decent quality HD!

I used the ScanChannelsBDA software to find where to orientate the antenna for the best signal. It has a command line interface but with a decent signal quality meter if you enter a frequency.

On FM I got lots of stuff from Tunisia and Algeria as we went from Mallorca towards Malta. Radio Algérie International on 100.5 from Bordj El Bahri near Algiers was audible fairly strongly for a long way on my pocket radio while sunbathing.

Good evening everyone

The Dutch Muxes are active this evening. Noord (CH 46), Utrecht(CH50), West (CH52), are all coming in here loud and clear. The Noord Holland Mux (CH 39) , which is usually the strongest of them all is suffering some break up (unusually).

Hopefully the lift is getting further inland.

Happy DX.

Jon

The lift must be increasing, because the Noord Holland MUX (CH39) is now 69% signal (100% quality) and rock solid. The Omrop Fryslan MUX (CH32) is also coming in very strongly.

No signal from Gelderland though (CH 42).

Regards

Jon

Yes !

I also have a German Mux on CH43 (first time), the MUX contains:

hr fensehen
MDR FERNSEHEN
NDR FS NDS
NDR FS HH
NDR FS SH*
NDR FS MVP*
WDR Koln

Well done on Germany. I don't often visit this section but had a feeling you would have some dx so thought I'd check it out. I wonder if there were any Danish signals about. I'm sure if analogue was still around you would have had something. Still great DX!