https://www.aerialsandtv.com/product/xb16a-aerial is a mahoosive antenna! Not the greatest gain at 21 cf the rest of Band A, but nevertheless higher than any decent quality alternatives. Likely in a fringe location there will be diffracted signals over hills/ridges rather than line of sight and 'standing waves' that needs careful antenna positioning to get even signal levels across the band?
Yes, it's a big bugger. Because of the difference in powers across the MUXes it's always been a bit of a struggle to get reliable operation of the minor ones.
What does Wolfbane predict your field strength to be?
http://www.wolfbane.net/ (click the UK digital TV predictor link) Just for the fun of some gain/loss calculations.
Like all of them it suggests we shouldn't need anything special. I suspect our particular location is 'difficult' as we have actual ground between us and line-of-sight, and that ground has many trees and buildings on it.
You can tell it's a strange area as there is every permutation of aerial type, direction and orientation, some of which probably don't even work reliably (my neighbour behind, which is the direction my aerial is facing, is a case in point). There are a lot of satellite dishes.
https://www.fringeelectronics.co.uk/wb22range.html is the amp and Fringe state that it may need filtering from mobile (4G mentioned from the 800 MHz clearance, but now it will be a 21-48 bandpass following the 700 MHz clearance). While it may be a low likelihood of mobile interference (the aerial has good rejection above ch 45/46) it's worth checking if you might be affected?
https://restoretv.uk/
I think it is at least somewhat protected as I used to have two aerials combined via a hi-lo pass device. I think the divide is at channel 38. (Edit. Just found the web page I documented this exercise on:
Adding group E to an A to get channels 55 &56 ) The XB16A is the lo-band and there was a Yagi I think for the hi-band to get ch 55 &56. After removing the high band aerial I deliberately left the combiner in the line to act as a filter since it will only pass group A (or lower) frequencies.
However if the bedroom outlet from the Fringe masthead has nothing attached it would be worth fitting a 'terminator' (75 ohm resistor between centre pin and outer screen). A TV set tuner or even a 2-way splitter will have the same terminating effect.
That's a thought though I suspect it's not related as it's been like that most of the time we've been in the house.
There's a chance of interference under enhanced propagation if such a large array if pointing Continent-wards. The Vp signals are more immune to the Hp transmitter source on the continent (and ROW is directional to not interfere to them as much).
Yes, I think we have had occasional problems in certain weather conditions, but then it wasn't just us. Now I see that V gives us 200kW on all muxes I will flip the aerial on it's side sometime (when we get some summer again) assuming all the bolts haven't seized up.
Only? That's a lot in my book (I don't even get that with a 10 dB amplifier in circuit). Of course just using the strength figure is no useful measure of being able to demodulate. It's C/N (carrier/noise) that is important and it doesn't tell you N, so reporting C (aka strength here) isn't that helpful in the grand scheme. It's perfectly possible to decode reliably as low as strength 30 and a bit lower.