Graham, Ron passed away in 2010. George has been based in Spain for a very long time, iirc.
Mail order is still available and the website is still live and the aerials are now available in kit form (for shipping). I can imagine being by the coast takes its toll.
RS rigged my G17 a quarter of a century ago and it is still going strong, I had met him a few times for different rigs, a Puccini fan, iirc. The coax lead has subsequently been replaced after water ingress, which George suggested might have occurred when we discussed the matter by phone. I eventually found a great guy locally, well experienced with radio aerials.
Rowridge is undergoing essential maintenance at the moment and is on reduced power.
I am line of sight of Rowridge and it has been up and down of late.
Below is from BBC check transmitter faults.
|From 10:02AM on 7th May 2024|BBC Radio 1|Slightly reduced power due to essential engineering|
|From 10:01AM to 11:46AM on 4th May 2024|BBC Radio 1|Slightly reduced power due to essential engineering|
|From 10:02AM on 7th May 2024|BBC Radio 2|Slightly reduced power due to essential engineering|
|From 10:01AM to 11:46AM on 4th May 2024|BBC Radio 2|Slightly reduced power due to essential engineering|
|From 10:02AM on 7th May 2024|BBC Radio 3|Slightly reduced power due to essential engineering|
|From 10:01AM to 11:46AM on 4th May 2024|BBC Radio 3|Slightly reduced power due to essential engineering|
|From 10:02AM on 7th May 2024|BBC Radio 4|Slightly reduced power due to essential engineering|
|From 10:01AM to 11:46AM on 4th May 2024|BBC Radio 4|Slightly reduced power due to essential engineering|
|From 10:02AM on 7th May 2024|BBC Radio Solent|Slightly reduced power due to essential engineering|
I was in touch with George Smith in Spain as recently as last year - as responsive and helpful as ever. I bought the G17 when I acquired the NAT01, but never installed it as the tuner worked perfectly with my old 4-element aerial - until late 2022.
NeilS thank you for confirming it can still be serviced. Worth doing while it can still be done. I never mind a trip down to Salisbury, as it reminds me of the happy days when I was able to drop down and chat with the great JV himself - including about folding bikes, yachts etc… And a service now will probably see it through until the fateful day when they do go ahead with switch-off.
I’d love to get the G17 up, but it won’t fit in the loft where the 4-element is. We built our house in a period style, and it is so far unadorned with aerials, so there’s a WAF issue here. I’d have to send her off on a boozy lunch with her chums and hope she didn’t notice when she got back; though there’s one gully I might be able to partially hide it in.
In the meantime I’ll try a run of new WF100 - George warned me it’s hard to get “real” CT100 any more, as much of it is fake and uses inferior metal.
Kend I think you might have nailed it for me. I was about to suggest that the NAT01 flips to mono when the sky is clear: I’ve had good stereo reception all weekend, during the cloud and rain, and this beautiful clear blue morning it’s mono again. I couldn’t understand that. But I can understand the impact of reduced power!
Justin at aerialsandtv is another gem of the industry - and thank you Skeptikal, that’s indeed where I’ll get the WF100.
Here is an anectdotal story about my NAT-01 experience when I relocated to South Florida.
When I first moved here about 12 years ago, there was only one FM station worth listening to…a classical station in Miami. But it was a good distance away.
Well there was no rule about sticking them on a ladder and putting it in the backyard, which is exactly which I did. But the line of sight was partially obscured by trees and after ages, the best I could do was to get a relatively hiss-free mono signal and that stereo ‘dart’ indicator would not light up.
But one day, after a strong windstorm…the stereo indicator lit up for the first time, and I was getting glorious stereo sound. So I went outside to see what had changed.
The wind had blown the antenna and turned it by 90 degrees. It turns out the radio station was vertically polarized and I had set up the antenna for standard horizontal polarization. By a stroke of serendipidy my fortunes were reversed.
Of course 6 months later, the radio station shut down and was replaced by a Christian music station.
At which point I removed the G17, the ladder and the NAT01, which now has now been on long term loan to someone I know for the last 4 years.
Having a weaker signal with clear skies is to be both theoretically and practically expected…the clouds are not there to bounce the signal back to earth and it just gets radiated to the stratosphere.
Very interesting. I think most uk stations are horizontally polarised and I don’t think I have seen an installed Galaxie in vertical orientation.
I just dug out RS’s aerial guide and he suggests most main transmission are horizontal and local repeaters are vertical - it fails to clarify if that refers (in general) to uk.
I remember Ron had fitted on his shop, what was either a Galaxie 26/29 or 32 - which I doubt anyone used to feed a NAT01. The rig was triple masted and I think, triple or quad guy wired, all for stability.
The guide describes a G29 located in the Dordogne, achieving good regular reception of R3 !
The guide isn’t dated but likely >25yrs.
Who I wonder, can recall which model Galaxie still is doing duty at Southampton Road - I believe there may be more than one?
Apologies to the OP for the “drift” !
I’m interested that there’s a link between clear skies and a weaker signal. In trying to find a pattern in the tuner’s behaviour, I had picked up a possible connection. But after kend’s very helpful post - I have bookmarked that webpage, as I’d looked for it but failed to find it - I was beginning to think the link to clear weather was because that’s when they could carry out essential engineering on the mast.
I have a wonderful golden-eared friend who lives in Virginia, close to Washington DC, and is a great fan of the NAT01. He envies us the fact that there are still a few good stations in the UK broadcasting in stereo. I’ve hooked an iPad into my system to compare the FM signal through the NAT with BBC sounds. I’m afraid it’s no contest, even when FM is delivering mono.
Rowridge is horizontal for FM, as I understand it, but both horizontal and vertical for telly - I believe to help customers who are getting interference from France. Justin at ATS suggested I try my TV aerial vertically, even though it wasn’t a Group A aerial, before buying a new one from him
The ones on the factory are Galaxie 23s, there are four of them. I don’t know if they are currently all in use though.
I can recall seeing Ron’s American van parked beneath & him shimmying up the triple masts with no safety gear in sight! Old skool
Rowridge and all the main national/regional FM broadcast transmitters in UK are ‘mixed’ (also called ‘circular’) polarity. Local infill transmitters are mostly vertical only.
RonToolsie one of the side benefits of my love of music is that it has brought me into contact with a number of wonderful people - Julian Vereker and Kit among them. I owe them all a huge debt of gratitude for the enrichment they’ve brought to my life. And the pleasure continues to spread - a close friend of mine took delivery of a delicious pile of Naim boxes this morning, although he’s fully gone over to the streaming side, and is not tempted by the old glories of FM.
I’m going to explore whether the BBC might be willing to send out text alerts, to those that want them, when engineering work causes a drop in output at one of their masts. My “stereo dart” has been coming and going this morning, and sure enough the “Check transmitter faults” site has logged engineering work today, although the timing they give doesn’t coincide with the output here.
The link below will take you to a picture of my Galaxie 17 vertically aligned to receive the signal from the nearby vertically polarised relay station.
The signal I receive from the relay station is much better than what I was getting from Wenvoe.
Cleaner than mine, which has been up a quarter of a century this summer - almost first job after a move. Rather think RS encouraged me to bring it from my previous house, since it hadn’t been up long and he rigged it and a new digital tv aerial.
Pleased the OP is making progress with tracing the stereo issue.
I remember the dark brown van very well. I witnessed around five rigs I was fortunate to acquire, starting early eighties. It was still a decade away from NAT02 joining my system, ultimately moving over when I located a mint 01. Proms on the horizon and nightly treats with NAT01.
BBC stations (apart from Radio Solent) and Classic FM off air today for this Soton listener, due to ‘essential engineering works’ on Rowridge transmitter.
