Does The Cold Affrect Freeview Broadcasts?

csnann

I noticed a couple of days ago that I have lost everything on UHF channel 54 - that is Film 4, Viva, 4Music, Yesterday, along with everything else on that channel. Is this because of the cold? The all the other UHF channels (41,44,47,49 and 51) seem to be OK.

HoofeHearted

[FONT=Arial,Helvetica][FONT=Arial,Helvetica]Your Aerial is probably Group B (Ch 35-53), so Ch 54 is just out of range. Check that the aerial does not have snow on it at this may be attenuating the signal on Ch 54, whilst not affecting the in-range channels as much.[/FONT][/FONT]

csnann

It probably does have snow on it but I'm not cimbing up there to clean it off! The reception on those channels has always been weak, I will just have to wait to see if the channels come back when the weather warms up.

HoofeHearted

Good idea. You don't want to become another Rod Hull. :rolleyes:

isofa

Our freeview signal deteriorates in bad weather, mainly BBC1 and 2, but they are fine normally, the aerial is in the loft, so it's nothing to do with snow build up. DAB broadcasts also suffer. It's annoying, if we couldn't switch back to analogue we'd not get 1 or 2...

Hopefully when analogue gets switched off, the ramped up digital signals will make this problem a thing of the past...

JasX

cold -> no

antennae being buried under and/or coated in snow and ice -> yes

OK_Sauce

Could be atmospherics....

isofa

JasX wrote: »

cold -> no

antennae being buried under and/or coated in snow and ice -> yes

Agree with OK Sauce. I'd say it's almost certainly to do with atmospheric pressure and associated weather.... High pressure weather pattens and regions can affect signals, as do other tropospheric conditions. Although sunlight is a main affector and some argue atmosphic pressure has little effect, but it's widely reported in mainland Europe. Even though we are talking about digital, these signals can still suffer from "co-channel TV interference".

kwikbreaks

OK Sauce and Isofa are correct - high pressure does indeed impact UHF TV reception. It increases the chances of temperature inversions leading to...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropospheric_ducting

Strangely enough the problem isn't because transmission ranges are reduced it is because they are improved so distant transmitters which are normally well out of range start to come in strongly enough to cause problems with the normal channels (especially if they are already dodgy).

PROLIANT

Snow and other weather have adverse effects on VHF/UHF radio signals, water ingress in the Coax feeder? Can freeze and expand trapped water causing failure of the Coax cable.

It could be that the Antenna is incorrectly polarized i.e. depending on the TV transmitter it is either horizontally polarized or vertically polarized, in normal speak that means your Antenna will either be mounted on the flat side where the Antenna elements point left to right or if vertical top to bottom (that is the best analogy I could come up with on the fly, sorry).

The difference in signal strength between polarizations is circa 3dB, which may just be enough to cause degradation of signal quality.

Inactive

So are suggesting that the snow/ice has somehow turned the aerial through 90 degree's?

It was OK prior to this.