More trouble with trees and satellite reception

This was an existing customer at an old manor house, they had used me for satellite problems in the past and now called me out to see if I could find somewhere more accessible for the satellite dish. It had started on the front wall of the house but was now on a pole so high it needed scaffolding to reach. Now, once again it was being blocked by the surrounding trees and they asked me to find ...

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Problems with the Carhampton relay

Since mid July I’ve been getting more and more reports of problems receiving the Carhampton relay. My first thought was that the relay had a fault and I reassured my customers that it would be up and running again in a couple of days…but it wasn’t. I had first been contacted by three of my customers in Old Cleeve and one in West Quantoxhead reporting a loss of local channels and it soon became clear that the fault ...

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Aerial Groups

These last few weeks have been very busy with the change of frequency on the Mendip transmitter. The BBC channels which were being transmitted on channel 49 have moved to channel 32, on the whole this hasn’t been a problem but I have come across a couple of instances where group C/D aerials were being used. Probably a good time to explain aerial grouping then.

In the past all frequencies from Mendip were in the C/D range, ...

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Tuesday 16/10/18

This tangle of wires was what I found in someones loft, all I had gone there to do was to get one socket working and add a new socket in a downstairs room, all the other sockets in the house were working fine.This was a converted bungalow with a bedroom in the loftspace and just a ...

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Mendip Retune 2018

It looks like Mendip is due for a major retune on March 31st, all frequencies will be moving on that date. I have no more information at the moment regarding time of day etc. At the moment it looks like the local relays (Porlock, Carhampton etc) are not going to be affected.

Please give me a ring if you’d like my help on or after that date

Thank you.

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Beware of Yellow Pages!

I’ve said all this before, but I think it’s worth saying again, many people around here, and elsewhere no doubt, are being ripped off by companies claiming to be local, turning up from many miles away, installing the cheapest and nastiest aerial components and charging the earth for something that doesn’t work. I do my best to warn against these companies but by the time I’m called out to put it right the financial damage is done.

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Cheap Aerials

Well I always bang on about these two things…1 – never get someone out of Yellow Pages because they sound cheap and local, and 2 – you get what you pay for, although if you go with option 1 you will definitely pay more than you expect.

I’ve seen the vans in the area, I won’t mention names but the vans advertise aerial installations for £39 + VAT, this raises one important question for me – what ...

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Too much signal?

Is it possible to have too much signal from your aerial? What would the result be if this was the case?

The answer to the first question is yes, and to the second question…the result would be the same as having too little signal, a pixelated picture or even no signal.

Twice in the last week I’ve been called to homes where this was happening, both homes had aerials that had been fitted by me four ...

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An old Philips

Well I say ‘old’ but these days anything over five years old seems to be considered ‘past it’. Well this seven or eight year old TV was brought into me completely dead, no standby light, nothing. This was expected to be terminal by its owner but was infact just a very small capacitor in the power supply. No, it wasn’t bulging as most of the youview and Google ‘experts’ would have you believe, actually in the last few ...

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