On 16 Feb, 10:43, "Adrian" wrote:

The chances are, if the mast was in such a bad state then the aerial would
have been too so both would have needed replacing.

The mast failure was caused by a steel clamp in contact with an
aluminium tube, and localized electrolytic reaction between them. It
was only around 10 years old, in an unpolluted rural location. I'm not
entirely impressed with the mast life for that matter - if you're
mixing metals like this, either plate them or shim them.

The old downlead most
likely would not have been digital quality so susceptable to interference,
if the new downlead has copper foil and copper braid then that is what is
required.

It's plain braid. Half of it's RG58 now anyway - I did some relocation
of the sockets recently and chopped it, then replaced it with what I
had handy. As I said in the OP, they're so close to Winter Hill you
can practically run the lights off the signal strength - any impedance
mismatch isn't causing any problems.