Rogues Gallery

When this was installed the main transmitter provided analogue Channel Five but the local relay didn’t. Following analogue switch-off the preference for the main transmitter remained, because the relay transmits only the PSB muxes. So the situation remains the same, in that the relay provides better signal strength but the main station provides more channels. The ideal is to have both, and when I walked down the main street of this little Borders town I saw lots of installations comprising a nice good quality 18 element aerial at the top of the mast with a ten-element half way down the mast, and  a diplexer. Combining the signals efficiently is easy because the relay is Channel Group A and the main station is Channel Group CD.

The installation pictured is quite different to all the others I saw that day. Two contract-quality ten-element aerials are connected together by means of a taped joint. This will cause all sorts of problems. It’s important to use a diplexer when the outputs of two aerial are combined.

There was a trend towards coloured plastic for the junction box caps of cheap aerials some years ago, but regrettably it didn’t occur to the manufacturers to use UV resistant plastic, so the caps just disintegrated.
The chimney pot is a good one though. Made in Corbridge as you can see. 

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