The local BBC VHF Band II transmitters in Guildford are located in a cluttered area above the town. The Radio 3 signal in Guildford has for a number of years been unacceptably polluted by interfering signals due to intermodulation distortion. The BBC has tried to get planning permission from Guildford Borough Council for a new mast which it says will alleviate the problems. This has been turned down on environmental grounds. Meanwhile, the high quality Radio 3 classic music station on 90.3 MHz suffers from electronic environmental pollution of the worst kind, which is probably more of a problem to local residents than the sight of a mast.
A letter to DJJ dated 9 December 1996 states the following...
...The Guildford transmitter uses a re-broadcast link from a nearby transmitter as its incoming source of programme. This signal is picked up by an antenna on our mast and then passed to the transmitting equipment at the base of the mast. Unfortunately, the incoming Radio 3 signal from Wrotham is subject to interference that is generated by the interaction between the many high signal levels transmitted from the four masts. This problem has been present for some considerable time, and has become progressively worse as more services have been added to the site.
We have conducted some tests which showed that if we were able to use a receiving point away from the four transmitting masts then we would be able to pick up a clean Radio 3 signal. We therefore applied for planning permission to erect another mast, some distance from the existing structures, on which we could put the receiving antennas. Unfortunately, the planning authority refused to give permission for this mast to be built. With the recent introduction of an FM service from our Crystal Palace transmitter, the Guildford link has been changed to this and an improvement has been noted. Whilst this new link is not ideal we are actively looking at ways of improving this still further and the possibility of using the Astra satellite is under consideration.....
The Radio 3 service is the one station which suffers badly from this problem in Guildford. It is the single station where the burbles, birdies, and whistles are most noticeable since for much of the time it runs quiet music at a low modulation index. The received signal is quite unrecordable and is even bad on car radios and mono portables.
A letter to Guildford Borough Council, Millmead, Guildford, and to the MP for Guildford, Nick St Aubyn, House of Commons, Westminster London SW1 might help to get this problem addressed. It has been bad since I came to Guildford in 1983.
The problem has got significantly worse recently, and now affects the broadcasts from Wrotham and Crystal Palace as well. The local Guildford transmitter is so bad that even on a mono-only radio the signal is often unacceptable. The responsibility for transmission of broadcast signals no longer lies with the BBC, who have "privatised" this part of their operations.
We hope the BBC can push forward plans for Digital Audio Broadcasting. They have been broadcasting a trial DAB signal in the Guildford area for about a year now. The receivers are not yet available; the standard is a pan-European standard and a number of manufacturers are producing chip sets for the receivers. The first commercially available receivers should be unveiled in Germany next month.
As with all new untried technology, the costs to the consumers will be high at first. Probably it will take into the next millennium before widespread adoption of DAB solves these problems.
The problem is still worsening. Since the "privatisation" of transmitting services, the companies to whom the BBC masts and transmitters were sold have been trying to "make money" by renting out space on their masts to all kinds of service providers. This has contributed to the clutter of signals in the near fields of these antennas and has made the significant deterioration we observe in intermodulation interference.
The firm involved in running the Guildford transmitter and mast is aware of the problems and is said to be proceeding with changes to the service to improve the situation, which may happen in the months April-June 1998. Watch this space.
Recently, the problem has lessened. The signals are still polluted, but for most everyday purposes they sound significantly cleaner. It is difficult to be sure of this as the interference level varies markedly through the day and is different on different days of the week. Nevertheless, the worst periods have become significantly less bad.
Hearsay gossip from a colleague who attended a recent BBC "open day" is that the BBC are well aware of the problem and are very embarrassed about it. The latest plot is to drive the local transmitter with a R3 signal derived from the DAB service available in Guildford. This is uncertainly mooted to be "sometime this year"; the hold-up is that the DAB receivers are said to channel hop if they get knocked off the air for any reason, and that they may automatically acquire a different channel when they reset. If this problem can be solved, the solution may be rapidly forthcoming as DAB receivers are now said to be commercially available, eg from John Lewis chains, for about 800 UKP.
Another observation is that the interfering burbles and whistles are very significantly less troublesome on wet days.
The interference on analogue Radio 3 from Guildford on 90.3MHz was significantly better over the New Year celebration period, but has since deteriorated again.
There is a commercial DAB receiver using circuit boards which are British-developed and therefore exceedingly expensive for what they are. Roke Manor, Racal, developed these boards. It costs 800 UK pounds, which is far too much for the technology to be taken up rapidly.
There is no intrinsic reason why a DAB receiver should cost any more than a HiFi CD player; an acceptable improvement over analogue radio would cost 1-3 hundred pounds (one feels) when the purveyors deem the time is right. The BBC is currently having a lot of trouble getting its digital TV services off the ground.
Meanwhile, there is clearly a great incentive to keep up the pressure on the HiFi buyers by deliberately neglecting to invest in simple improvements to the existing terrestrial service.
I have gone back to listening to CDs and analogue tapes. Also vinyl records from 1955-1985. If I did not have other reasons for wanting a TV service I would junk my video equipment and stop paying the BBC a licence fee.
My advice would be, do not be tempted to buy into Digital Radio until the tuner prices are below 250 UK pounds.
VideoLogic (www.videologic.com) have brought out a tuner for 300 UK pounds which looks good. Model number DRX-601E. I bought one and installed it. It failed to find any DAB signal on its (supplied) indoor wire dipole antenna (215 MHz approx) or on the band II antenna on the roof, via a 12.5 dB 40MHz to 860MHz wideband booster amplifier. This antenna is a horizontally polarised 4 element Yagi pointing roughly East. The DAB transmissions in band III are said to be vertically polarised. So, so far, no luck with the nascent DAB service.
After trying two of the videologic boxes above, neither of which worked, at the third attempt (with a factory -tested unit) the decoding works fine. As expected the antenna is not critical. The spectrum analyser showed a -60 dBm band III (225 MHz approx) signal at the installation site. It receives 39 channels in glorious sound quality, including many services which cannot be received here otherwise.
The unit works perfectly on an antenna consisting of a 45 cm length of single core plastic insulated hookup wire. There is no compromise of sound quality.
As expected, this is a complete solution to the problem and recommended highly at this location.
I would remark that this is the most cost-effective 300 UK pounds I have spent on HiFi in the last 25 years.
For those people who are interested, here is a list of the available channels here in Guildford as read out from the display.
Sunrise Radio - Switch London - Classic FM - Virgin Radio Talksport - Planet Rock - Core - Bloomers Radio - ITN news Life - Oneword - Primetime Radio - The Lounge - Ministry of Sound Travel Now - Heart - BBC London Live - The Groove - BIS London WLON the mix -BBC Radio 1 - BBC Radio 2 - BBC Radio 3 - BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 5 live - BBC World Service - BBC Radio 5 sports BBC Radio 4 long-wave - BBC test - X FM - Kiss - News direct Capital FM - Magic - Capital Gold - Century London - LBCI bought it from "Rogers Hi-Fi" in Godalming.
Incidentally, if you are in Godalming, just up the road from Rogers HiFi is the Kaliniktas Greek Taverna restaurant, telephone number 01483 425702. This is a splendid place which is advertised here, gratuitously, as we don't want to see it go out of business.
I noticed today, 22nd March 2001, that the digital broadcast signals from BBC R3 and R4 are delayed by about a half a second from the analogue signals from the local repeater. This probably makes the DAB "pips" or Greenwich time signals about half a second in error.
The following from an email on 22nd May 2001...
..the BBC has just modified this transmitter to be fed with its own circuit ...the problem should therefore have completely disappeared as of 3.15 pm on 15th May 2001...
Which indeed, it has. There is now a beautiful, clean, stable, BBC R3 FM signal in Guildford with the expected noise level and no interference.
This is an ongoing saga of attempting to get a negative scanner C5100 made by Hewlett Packard (HP) serviced by them.
1st December 2001, phoned directory enquiries to find a number for HP in the UK
About 5 transfers later, call answered by voice-mail. Eventually, given an operator who took the details of the model and S/N and transferred the call to the service department.
Service department arranged collection the following day. So far, so good.
Item returned on the 11th December 2001 or thereabouts, minus power supply and lead, in a Kenwood mixer box and with writing in French on the tickets.
Called HP about the lead. They had no record of their job number. After about three attempts, they agreed to supply another lead and power supply, which arrived around the 20th December 2001.
The apparatus did not work; likely not even powered up, as a further phone call revealed that the model number had been erroneously recorded as C5110. The service agent in France had returned the item, accordingly, without touching it.
Phoned HP again on 21st December 2001. Could not get an answer beyond the voice-mail.
Phoned HP again on 4th Jan 2002. They agreed a re-repair at no cost. They assigned another number, and arranged for the item to be collected "within a week".
No-one came. Phoned HP on 11th Jan 2002, they could not find out what had happened and agreed to phone back, which they didn't.
Saga continues...time spent so far, 42 days, multiple phone calls, over an hour on the phone....
Watch this space!!
14th January; Phoned HP and after 15 mins in the voice-mail found an operator who told me they would collect on the 15th. They didn't.
15th January; Phoned HP and after 25 minutes in the voice-mail and two more operators than yesterday, one of whom said that they had been given the "wrong reference number" -- was told they would collect on the 16th, and return a new Photosmart on the 21st. Incidentally, why is it that no American companies can transcribe verbal data accurately? This is my experience since the 1960s. It makes no difference what is the nationality of person working for them. It is in their "culture".
Time so far, 46 days from contacting them and a total of two hours on the phone.
Keep watching....
16th January. No collection yet. Phoned HP. "I'm Andy" they said, "I'll log it for you myself. I'll do it tomorrow". No comment from me :-)
17th January 2002. Instead of waiting in for them not to come yet another day, I phoned HP at 10am. They agreed to collect it ASAP. It was picked up at 14:40, and a "standard replacement" promised for 21st January, Monday.
18th January 2002. A package was delivered by Royal Mail parcels to "next door" as we were out. It turned out to be the promised replacement Photosmart. The green plastic tie around the package said "service parts Grenoble" (Grenoble is in France). The sticker on the side indicated that the sender was FDX supply in Mainz, Germany.
It remains to test the new unit.
Remarks. I had posted this website's URL to postmaster@hp.com on the 11th January 2002 and inspection of the web logs showed that they had read the page sometime on the 12th January. I have not been charged for this replacement, even though the unit was years out of Guarantee. As with most computing problems, persistence seems to have paid off in the end. Thanks to HP.
Postscript. 8th February 2002, and there is a phone call from HP on the answering machine. They have finally got round to worrying about this problem, even though they have fixed it long since. They invite me to phone back; no thanks, after all the mess I've had with their phone operatives and it is now day 70 from the original contact. How's that for speed of service then?
And again. 12th February 2002. After two phone calls from the carriers who delivered the new machine and took away the old one, HP finally gets around to charging the credit card. I'd given the number to them 74 days before. So now, HP has money and we have a functioning machine and I think, everyone is happy. Incidentally, it says that the cost of £134 for the "fix" is the cost to the manufacturers of supplying a totally new unit, less extras like packaging and instructions. As we paid 4 or 500 pounds originally one can estimate the markup on this technology.