The Grumble Thread - No energy for a full on rant.

[TheLurker]

A lot of interference on the TV last night so I retuned it to see if it helped. Now have 40 channels fewer than before.

If you selected  the "tune by signal strength" try again today.  Although 40 fewer channels of crap sounds to me like something that should be in one of the Good News threads and I'd be tempted to not bother.

[andytheflyer]

Or the worst thing, the constant beep beep beep beep of reversing vehicles. I am researching who invented the reversing vehicle warning and then I'm going to track down and kill them.

I used to design and prepare environmental permits for landfills for my waste management clients.  The landfill operators used to get the majority of their complaints from neighbouring properties, complaining about the noise pollution from the reversing beepers on rubbish trucks and plant.

IME, if you are wandering around an active landfill, you'll be 100% occupied making sure you don't get run over anyway.  And if not, you'll quickly qualify for a Darwin award.

[Kim]

I used to design and prepare environmental permits for landfills for my waste management clients.  The landfill operators used to get the majority of their complaints from neighbouring properties, complaining about the noise pollution from the reversing beepers on rubbish trucks and plant.

Smokers, presumably.  Who else could be bothered by reversing beepers more than the stink of decaying rubbish?   

IME, if you are wandering around an active landfill, you'll be 100% occupied making sure you don't get run over anyway.  And if not, you'll quickly qualify for a Darwin award.

My understanding is that the main benefit is on building sites, where people are often wandering about thinking of other things, and deliveries by large squishy vehicles are common, but infrequent.

[spesh]

A lot of interference on the TV last night so I retuned it to see if it helped. Now have 40 channels fewer than before.

If you selected  the "tune by signal strength" try again today.  Although 40 fewer channels of crap sounds to me like something that should be in one of the Good News threads and I'd be tempted to not bother.

Not if all that he was left with was just Dave, shopping, children's and phone sex/dating channels. 

[PeteB99]

A lot of interference on the TV last night so I retuned it to see if it helped. Now have 40 channels fewer than before.

If you selected  the "tune by signal strength" try again today.  Although 40 fewer channels of crap sounds to me like something that should be in one of the Good News threads and I'd be tempted to not bother.

Not if all that he was left with was just Dave, shopping, children's and phone sex/dating channels. 

There isn't an option for tune by signal strength (I've looked). Only autotune, I will have another go when I get a round tuit.

Normally as long as it gets BBC1,2,4 and the news channel I'm ok but last night there was a Portugese footie match I wanted to watch hence the retune attempt.

I'll probably invest in an aerial booster amp. I've got one already but it's at least 25 yrs old and bought for an analogue TV when I lived in the radio shadow of one of Norwich's only tower blocks.

[Kim]

Problem with booster amps is they do what you'd expect: Amplify the noise, as well as the signal.  Sometimes it's enough to push the signal level over a threshold, but it's not the proper solution (which is a decent aerial and good quality coax, both of which will actually increase the SNR).

Builders, $ky engineers and their ilk are known for installing aerial-shaped-objects (which look the part in exactly the same way that a supermarket BSO does) and the ubiquitous brown 'low loss' coax is notorious for being stingy with the copper and breaking down with old age and letting the water in.

Of course, you can muck about with booster amps without the aid of ladders...

[Beardy]

Problem with booster amps is they do what you'd expect: Amplify the noise, as well as the signal.  Sometimes it's enough to push the signal level over a threshold, but it's not the proper solution (which is a decent aerial and good quality coax, both of which will actually increase the SNR).

Builders, $ky engineers and their ilk are known for installing aerial-shaped-objects (which look the part in exactly the same way that a supermarket BSO does) and the ubiquitous brown 'low loss' coax is notorious for being stingy with the copper and breaking down with old age and letting the water in.

Of course, you can muck about with booster amps without the aid of ladders...

What she said, but to add, if you still need an amplifier once you’ve got a good aerial and decent coax, then a mast head amp,is what you need. Given the cost of these, it’s probable worthwhile fitting at the same time as the decent aerial then there’s only one visit to the roof required.

[Mr Larrington]

A lot of interference on the TV last night so I retuned it to see if it helped. Now have 40 channels fewer than before.

Could be worse.  Lt. Col. Larrington (retd.) was complaining that his PVR had stopped working.  "It just sits there saying 'No signal'" he said and yes, he did trying switching it off and on again.  Was all set to buy a replacement last weekend, but on a whim decided to try BBC1.  It worked.  No-one can explain how it got persuaded to try to receive Blaze+1 (which appears only to broadcast between 3 and 4 am).

[Kim]

Problem with booster amps is they do what you'd expect: Amplify the noise, as well as the signal.  Sometimes it's enough to push the signal level over a threshold, but it's not the proper solution (which is a decent aerial and good quality coax, both of which will actually increase the SNR).

Builders, $ky engineers and their ilk are known for installing aerial-shaped-objects (which look the part in exactly the same way that a supermarket BSO does) and the ubiquitous brown 'low loss' coax is notorious for being stingy with the copper and breaking down with old age and letting the water in.

Of course, you can muck about with booster amps without the aid of ladders...

What she said, but to add, if you still need an amplifier once you’ve got a good aerial and decent coax, then a mast head amp,is what you need. Given the cost of these, it’s probable worthwhile fitting at the same time as the decent aerial then there’s only one visit to the roof required.

Supplemental factoid:  Sometimes a 'booster amp' is in fact a power supply for a masthead amplifier.  This can lead to fun and games when a previous resident runs off with it.

[essexian]

Bugger off with your: "So, are you doing the Tour de France next year then" comments.

Its old, its boring and frankly, do I look like a professional cyclist? Look, I went to watch the football and not talk to people like you so leave me alone before I find a new use for my bike pump.


(er...this is a bit more or a rant than a grumble).

[PeteB99]

Problem with booster amps is they do what you'd expect: Amplify the noise, as well as the signal.  Sometimes it's enough to push the signal level over a threshold, but it's not the proper solution (which is a decent aerial and good quality coax, both of which will actually increase the SNR).

Builders, $ky engineers and their ilk are known for installing aerial-shaped-objects (which look the part in exactly the same way that a supermarket BSO does) and the ubiquitous brown 'low loss' coax is notorious for being stingy with the copper and breaking down with old age and letting the water in.

Of course, you can muck about with booster amps without the aid of ladders...

This

Getting a professional to go up on the roof will cost money that can be better expended on other things and I'm certainly not going up there myself.

Retuned yesterday and got most of the HD channels back on the list although they still come up with weak / no signal If you try to watch them (at least in the evening. Reception was better mid afternoon)

Q If all the channels are broadcast from the same place (Winter hill, 60 miles away but should still be line of sight) and at the same power 100KW according to the transmitter data how come only some channels are affected?

[Kim]

Its old, its boring and frankly, do I look like a professional cyclist?

I had someone ask if I was a professional cyclist yesterday.  I was crouched on the ground next to my touring recumbent fettling the dynamo wiring with a swiss army knife.

I'm reasonably sure that this is simply down to the complete lack of clue the average BRITON has about cycling.  But you have to wonder...

[Kim]

Q If all the channels are broadcast from the same place (Winter hill, 60 miles away but should still be line of sight) and at the same power 100KW according to the transmitter data how come only some channels are affected?

Likely because something in the system favours certain frequencies over others.  Damp coax or a tree blocking the line-of-sight is going to attenuate higher frequencies more than lower ones.  Also, it could be due to inappropriate aerial group (In the old days, aerials were frequency-group-specific to improve performance and rejection of unwanted signals from distant transmitters.  In the early days of digital, this went out the window, with the extra signals often being out-of-group, requiring wideband aerials be installed to receive them properly.  I lost the plot with television before the analogue switch-off, but I expect everything got moved around a lot then.  It appears that Winter Hill had a major re-shuffle in March 2018, and the muxes are all now in group A where a 1980s/1990s aerial would have been a C/D.)

[Cudzoziemiec]

Its old, its boring and frankly, do I look like a professional cyclist?

I had someone ask if I was a professional cyclist yesterday.  I was crouched on the ground next to my touring recumbent fettling the dynamo wiring with a swiss army knife.

I'm reasonably sure that this is simply down to the complete lack of clue the average BRITON has about cycling.  But you have to wonder...

Define professional. I know someone who, at the age of 17 or thereabouts, spent a year riding for a minor Belgian pro team. At the end of the year they said, as they do to 99% of their team, Thanks but you're not fast enough and we've got hundreds of new teenagers hoping to make it big. So it never became a profession for him (and he probably didn't want it to be) but he was a professional cyclist. And then there's someone like Teethgrinder, who took a year or more out of his normal work to spend riding round Milton Keynes and Marsh Gibbon because he'd got sponsorship for it; for doing basically what he did and does anyway. So he isn't a professional but it is his profession.

[Kim]

Yeahbut, I'm neither Teethgrinder^[1] nor a 17yo racing snake.  Nobody's ever paid me to ride a bike, and I'm not even Belgian.

It's not the first time I've been asked, either^[2].


_{[1] I did ride through Marsh Gibbon last weekend.
[2] Blind woman on a train, after I folded up my Brompton to make room for her wheelchair.}

[Cudzoziemiec]

I know several people who've ridden through Marsh Gibbon and none of them are Teethgrinder. And the bloke who raced in Belgium is English (and his team was sponsored, bizarrely, by a Canadian manufacturer of safety boots). None of which is at all the point. Either they are misled by your quads of Hoy or they are just making conversation (I'll allow a few to be genuinely confused and some more to believe you are taking part in or training for some amateur race).

[Cudzoziemiec]

I've just remembered something recounted here by Mal Volio ex-otp. He stopped at a 24hr garage somewhere (I have a vague feeling it might have been in Devon, which makes the whole thing even odder) and was asked "Are you Teethgrinder?" Except they used Teethgrinder's real name, which probably makes it slightly less bizarre. This was years before the record attempt. I'd like to think that right now Tommy Gerronit in his Sky bodystocking is stocking up on Frijj from the 24hr Shell in Abergavenny and being asked "Are you Teethgrinder?" 

[Kim]

A random person at Mordor Central asked me if I was Charlotte once^[1]...


_{[1] It's happened on a couple of other occasions, but those were gatherings of cyclists, so much less random.}

[Cudzoziemiec]

To which the correct answer had to be, "No, I'm Wowbagger."

[Beardy]

The trouble with not having anything important enough to do is that the clock appears to be recording the passage of time at half the speed I'd normally expect.

[PeteB99]

Q If all the channels are broadcast from the same place (Winter hill, 60 miles away but should still be line of sight) and at the same power 100KW according to the transmitter data how come only some channels are affected?

Likely because something in the system favours certain frequencies over others.  Damp coax or a tree blocking the line-of-sight is going to attenuate higher frequencies more than lower ones.  Also, it could be due to inappropriate aerial group (In the old days, aerials were frequency-group-specific to improve performance and rejection of unwanted signals from distant transmitters.  In the early days of digital, this went out the window, with the extra signals often being out-of-group, requiring wideband aerials be installed to receive them properly.  I lost the plot with television before the analogue switch-off, but I expect everything got moved around a lot then.  It appears that Winter Hill had a major re-shuffle in March 2018, and the muxes are all now in group A where a 1980s/1990s aerial would have been a C/D.)

Looks like my original post was wrong. The affected channels are on the COM8 MUX which for some reason Winter Hill transmits at 22.6 KW rather than 100 KW for the other multiplexs. So probably a combination of distance and atmospherics.

[Beardy]

I mean, do I care if you agree to fund those developments or not? I won't be here, and the none delivery of those developments is not going to affect my bonus is it? So Mr Line Manager, there really is no value in giving me a hard time over the funding cockup for stories I took over after that should have all been agreed.

[andrewc]

Oh , contents insurance due is it ,  I suppose I'd better sort that out before I vanish off to foreign parts next week then 

[T42]

Halfway through a morning's happy re-arrangement of drilling/sanding area of workshop, neighbours pop round to tell us they're knocking down their barn, whose wall closes off one side of our garden. Had to descend to low-grade labour with masonry drills, fenceposts & wire netting to keep the bloody dogs from getting bricks on the noggin. Still not done, either. 

[Basil]

Ok BBC radio 4.  That's enough Aretha now.