London area transmitter news

Not really big news but I thought this might be worth a mention as most of us will be affected with this being in London...

London is set to loose one of it's main terrestrial TV channels next week for essential maintenance on the transmitter.

According to their transmitter information on their teletext page 535, and their engineering information page on their website, Five will have a 30 minute shutdown sometime between 10:00 and 16:00 in order to carry out annual plant preventative maintenance and switch modification work (whatever that means!).

I presume that Five will be the only service affected from the Croydon transmitter during this work, and as it does not mention anything about digital services, so I presume you will still be able to receive those.

This is the first time in a long time I can remember London loosing one of their TV channels for essential transmitter work, the only time I've seen London loose some TV channels is due to faults with the BBC link to Crystal Palace over the last few years.

I think it's quite rare for London to loose a TV channel for transmitter maintenance, it's usually only transmitters outside of London that seem to have more maintenance done to them...

Five probably has less transmitters, normally another transmitter probably relays a stronger signal. That's a guess. Also, Five is only 6 years old, this is likely only the 1st or 2nd time their transmitters have needed maintenance.

Another transmitter nearby would be on a diffrent frequency so not much good unless you want to move your aerial round and tune your telly in.

But we don't have five aerials do we? Each channel is on a different frequency!

I think you need to look up the difference between 'transmitter' and 'transmitting station', Digifiend.

Will the many London radio stations that use Croydon tx such as Magic, Kiss and Capital FM be affected?

In TV terms I think analogue Five is the only service broadcast from Croydon - BBC One/Two, ITV1/C4 and all the DTT services (including Five on Mux A) are all broadcast from Crystal Palace.

The Croydon transmitter used to be used for the ITV VHF 405 line service I believe - but they co-sited with the BBC at Crystal Palace for their UHF 625 line service?

Yes, but another transmitter will be in a diffrent direction!

Is this just not soooo typical of the attitude of the people in Greater London?

Just like when a trace of snow falls in inner London, it is put on the national news as being a national weather crisis.

The majority of the people in England do not live in Greater London, and so this news will not affect most people.

But thank you for providing the information anyways. It was interesting to read.

There are backup facilities for ITV1 and C4 at Croydon on the same frequencies as Crystal Palace; in the event of a failure at CP Croydon is switched on. I believe that this backup is tested weekly in the middle of the night.

Theres been work recently on the Black Hill transmitter covering central Scotland meaning lots of transmitter information slides being broadcast on BBC One Scotland and BBC Two Scotland.

8:50am - Sorry about the earlier quote that was here with no follow-up message, this was due to a fault I experienced with the forums




I refer the honourable gentleman to my earlier quote: