Bilsdale mast fire

[SiriusHardware]

Buried in there is the information that the new permanent mast is hoped to be installed in the Autumn of 2022 and be operation by spring 2023. It also includes the info that the new permanent mast will be 300m high.

How tall was the original one? I'm worried that even this new mast may still not give my partner her signal back (she is one of the "1%" whose Freeview service still has not been reinstated by any other means).

[paulsherwin]

The old mast was 314m.

[SiriusHardware]

We want our 14 metres back.

Even with the original mast she still needed a long Yagi and a masthead preamp to get a usable signal so anything inferior to the original mast is something for her to be concerned about. In truth, the radiation pattern from the new antenna setup vs. the one from the old array will make a much bigger difference, let's hope she doesn't end up in a notch.

[SiriusHardware]

Apologies if this already got mentioned and I missed it, but if not it may be of interest to some in the affected areas - it appears that the new permanent Bilsdale mast which has been built to full height has now gone 'live'.

https://www.bilsdalemast.co.uk/

When the original mast went down SWMBO lost her Freeview coverage and had to fall back on Freesat for the duration. It will be interesting to see if we can now get it again because she was always right on the margin of the original mast's coverage - enough so that if the radiation pattern has a null in it that wasn't there before, she still won't be able to get it.

You may ask, why bother if we have Freesat? Well, we have several expensive, decent Freeview HDD/DVD recorders which have been idle since the original mast incident and we would like to put them back into use.

[Rich Woods]

It will be interesting to see if fringe reception from Bilsdale is still possible in Grimsby & Cleethorpes. Must ask my friend.

[SiriusHardware]

I am surprised by how little this development has been commented upon by the press, because it seems likely that the many temporary relays which were put in place to fill in the coverage will now be stood down, requiring viewers to at least retune and in some cases have their aerials pointed back in the direction of the main mast.

When they do catch up, I have no doubt it will mostly be negative - 'New mast switch-on causes reception chaos' rather than 'Viewers' joy as TV signals return to Bilsdale'.

Personally, I applaud the efforts made by everyone involved in this mammoth engineering task. I'm glad I didn't have to do it.

[Paul Stenning]

The website does say that they have written to households that required an engineer visit to allow them to use the temporary services and that may require a further visit to restore services from the new mast, inviting them to phone if a retune doesn't help. I assume this would include all those who had their aerials repositioned.

It also says that those who received their signals from the temporary 80m mast at Bilsdale won't need to do anything as the restored services are the same channels and frequencies.

I agree, it has been an superb effort by everyone involved to get this completed to this stage in under 2 years. There is still work to do (restoring radio and mobile signals from the new mast) but I am very impressed with what has been achieved in a really difficult exposed location in such a short period of time.

[Ted Kendall]

Originally Posted by SiriusHardware

I applaud the efforts made by everyone involved in this mammoth engineering task. I'm glad I didn't have to do it.

Hear, hear!

[Hybrid tellies]

Totally agree its been an amazing achievement by everyone at Arqiva from restoring the temporary services after the fire of the original Bilsdale mast to the building and completion of the new 1000' mast which has just gone live with other services, radio and mobile phones, soon to follow.
A fantastic engineering achievement.