French Transmitters

[Department71]

Am trying to check if we are pointing our aerial at the right transmitter, is there a web site with the location of UHF transmitters in France?

 

Thanks

Steve

[Bannon]

Have you tried a search engine for this information? I tried one and lots of details back.

[JohnM]

Take a gander at this site. http://perso.wanadoo.fr/tvignaud/

 

[Teamedup]

Sometimes it isn't that easy. I contacted the TDF, they will be able to tell you exactly where the tranmitters are and which ones are best for which channels. We ended up with two ariels and a booster of some sort and a sort of decent picture in the end.

 

 

[Martin963]

In the good old days TDF were very helpful,  but they can be abrupt to the point of rudeness now (pressure of profits).  

So by all means try them but have a look also at

http://www.csa.fr/infos/operateurs/operateurs_television_sites.php

Click on the relevant dept.   Generally try a high power tx first (> 50 kW PAR (erp)) then look for the presence of a relay near to you in the list.   Have a look at your neighbours' installations as well,  and try and see which way the aerials are pointing.   Most transmissions are horizontal but a few are vertical (boom stays H,  but the rods are V). 

If you care to tell me where you are I can try and guess as well - I have a complete list of France's TV transmitters,  compiled from the old EBU lists and the above website.

And if you look at Thierry Vignaud's website you can "admire" quite a number of my photos in his galerie (I know, it's very sad,  most people visit cathedrals,  I do transmitter crawls).   See his Acrobat list of transmitters,  only lists the more important ones.

[Teamedup]

I can't even begin to tell you about the  excellant service the TDF gave us, which was certainly above and beyond the call of duty. But they were really rude and horrible to my neighbours later that same year. Could it still be luck of the draw.

[Martin963]

Well you must have charmed them!    In the late 1980's their Marseille head-of-agency could not have been more helpful,  but by 1993 he was recounting tales of woe and cut backs,  and when I wrote to them about four years ago they simply replied that the information I was requesting was not suitable for the public domain, even though it had all (bar some minor updates) been published by the EBU for years.   

But I'm glad it's not all gloom and doom.

[Department71]

To the kind person who said let me know where you are and i'll try and help ( sorry don't know who you are as the forum omits the names)

We are outside a village called Sanvignes les Mines, (Soane et Loire) with a direct line of sight to Mont St Vincent, it has a bl**dy big mast on top of it with red lights going to the top. The locals say that is where the transmitter is, but the picture on the tele could be better. Sometimes its not too bad, but other times its horrible. The tv was purchased in France, was of the cheaper variety. The aerial was also purchased in France about 18 months ago. There is a new down lead put in the same time as the new aerial.

I can't look at the aerials of the neighbours as I don't think they have a tv, well at least there are no aerials visible!!

 

Thanks again

Steve

[Teamedup]

Did you buy the right ariel for the job, the first one we bought was universal and not precise enough. And you may need an amplifier. That is what we had to do.

[Martin963]

Well the locals are right,  Mt St Vincent is the transmitter for Le Creusot and area,  and at 5.5 kW power on the main channels it ought to deliver a reasonable service where you are,  provided your aerial is well sited and oriented,  and with a reasonable gain.   Incidentally my data says the mast is 100 m tall.

Do you know if your aerial is wideband (probably is if purchased in France;  an aerial of the wrong group impairs reception,  but this is unlikely if purchased - as you say -  recently).   Mt St Vincent uses the following channels:   TF1 - 35  FR2 - 33   FR3 - 30  Canal + - 67  FR5 (lower power) - 38  M6 (lower power) - 60.   You could check perhaps on the TV whether these are the channels that you are actually tuned into.

I suspect that an alternative service might come in from the Autun transmitter,  actually sited on the Haut Folin in the Foret de St Prix (north west of you).   The channels in use there are 48/51/54/-/45/42  (the dash means there's no Canal +).   The power used here is 140 kW on the main channels so if you have good take off in that direction it might be worth trying if access to your aerial is easy.

There are also transmitters of significant power near Macon and Dijon (Nuits St Georges) but I don't think these will be in the running as far as your location is concerned (I could be wrong of course). 

Assuming your aerial is pointing at Mt St Vincent then check you are actually using the right channels.  I'm looking for obvious things here,  so please forgive me if they seem elementary.   The aerial that you bought should have the main boom horizontal,  or possibly a little (but  not much!) tipped up at the end nearest the transmitter;   the end with the shortest rods should be nearer the transmitter,  with the reflector and dipole (often a rectangular shaped loop of metal,  with the connection to the cable) at the furthest end from the transmitter.   For Mt St Vincent and Autun the rods should be horizontal.   Check all connections,  ideally the coax plug going into the TV should have the cable contacts soldered if at all possible,  but with some makes you just can't do it. 

Have you tried watching the picture whilst making fine adjustments to the aerial direction (assuming it isn't dangerous for you to do this).   Are all the channels bad or are some worse than others?  FR5 and M6 might be consistently worse given their lower power.  How many elements (rods) has the aerial - it might need to have more and be therefore higher gain (more sensitive)....

Apart from that it's difficult to make predictions.   Transmitter powers on UHF in France are generally somewhat lower than was originally envisaged in the planning,  mainly as a result of receivers becoming more sensitive and the concomitant opportunity to save on energy costs.   As a result,  and compared to the UK, it is often more critical to get the French aerial absolutely right,  where in similar conditions in the UK you would "get away with it".

If all else fails the analogue satellite route is totally reliable,  and not that expensive (only a few € more expensive for the receiver and dish than a conventional aerial).

Hope you get an improvement one way or another

[Department71]

Martin,

Thanks a lot for your full and helpful reply, I will have a look when back in France in August. Yes the aerial is a wide band type I made sure before purchasing it, there are quite a few elements think 18. Funny we seem to get a better picture on M6 then on France3. One other area I was thinking about, the tv is at the cheaper end of the market ( for a holiday home I didn't want to buy an expensive one to be nicked) maybe the afc circuit is not as good as it should be.

Anyway thanks for the ideas.

Steve

[Martin963]

How very frustrating for you. Problems with individual channels can be difficult to solve – my parents for years had terrible BBC 2 reception even though the signal on BBC 1 & ITV was good. In the end (years later) we discovered that an aerial mounted lower and on a different part of the house solved the problem.

The BBC used to recommend mounting aerials on a cranked pole so that twisting the support allowed the aerial to be tried in many different positions in the (same) horizontal plane. If access to your aerial is easy then try moving it (if possible!) a couple of feet from side to side and forwards and backwards to see if this clears the problem (it may cure FR3 and spoil one of the others of course). I forgot to ask – is the aerial outside? (much better if it is, attic aerials are not nearly as satisfactory).

Another thought – do you have a mobile phone (or DECT phone) near the set? Or anything else electronic that might be causing problems on FR3?

As teamedup suggested, another possible solution is an aerial amplifier. The virtues of these can often be overrated, but sometimes they do the job.

Teamedup is also right in saying a group-specific aerial might pull in more signal, problem is you may knock out FR5 & M6 if you buy what in the UK would be termed a group A aerial (chs 21 – 35 ish). Wideband aerials came along precisely to combat the problem of new programmes coming on stream on channels widely separated from the original group, though the disadvantage is a loss of antenna gain. To be honest, you’d probably have to order one of these group-specific aerials specially in France nowadays, and it may cost as much as the analogue satellite solution, crazy though the economics of that may seem.

The problem with the analogue satellite solution is that you will lose the regional content on FR3, maybe that is not important?

Personally I doubt it’s the set, most of these things are so stable nowadays that the AFC does nothing anyway.

Interesting problem, hope you get it sorted.