This squall was so strong it should have had a name. It played havoc with the broadcasters. Several times I saw the "technical difficulties" screen while surfing the channels to check my reception during a storm.

Weird stuff goes on with DTV. The local Fox affiliate, which is normally on 10.1 only, has all the sudden expanded to include 10.2, 10.3 and 10.4. and turned into a PBS from nearly 300 miles away. Meanwhile, both of the local PBS channels are still on the air and doing fine. How does this happen?

Don, are you in South Alabama? That's exactly what I'm seeing too; right now I've got two 10-1's, one Fox and on PBS.

This squall was so strong it should have had a name. It played havoc with the broadcasters. Several times I saw the "technical difficulties" screen while surfing the channels to check my reception during a storm.

Weird stuff goes on with DTV. The local Fox affiliate, which is normally on 10.1 only, has all the sudden expanded to include 10.2, 10.3 and 10.4. and turned into a PBS from nearly 300 miles away. Meanwhile, both of the local PBS channels are still on the air and doing fine. How does this happen?


300 miles... look into "trophospheric ducting".

http://www.dxinfocentre.com/propagation/tr-modes.htm

a fairly good explanation put on your sun glasses those are
horrid colors for a web page . :P

Don, are you in South Alabama? That's exactly what I'm seeing too; right now I've got two 10-1's, one Fox and on PBS.

Yes, I'm over by P'cola. I'm getting Fox on 10.1 but it says it's WBIQ-HD and shows the WBIQ program info. Subs 2, 3 and 4 are carrying WBIQ from Birmingham.

I'm getting both WALA and WBIQ on two different 10-1's right now. I had the same thing happen about a month ago. I think what happens is that all the APT channels are the same--the B'ham feed (WBIQ) gets sent to the local affiliates, which "re-brand" it with their virtual channels and callsigns. So the PBS signal we're getting is still coming from the WEIQ tower, on RF channel 41, but is "labelled" as WBIQ on 10-1 to 10-4.

The annoying part is that when the main APT signal gets passed through without rebranding, my Vizio tuner forgets where it is, so I have to rescan to pick it up again.

I'm still getting WALA on 10.1 and WBIQ on 10.2, 10.3 and 10.4 but I'm also getting WEIQ on 42.1, 42.2, 42.3 and 42.4 but it's not saying WEIQ. DTV sure is different.

We had a rare treat of some thunderstorms here last night. We probably get 1-2 a year here, if that.

I was able to test its affects on reception and did not notice any impairment for UHF. For VHF, the low band had significant impairment, while the high band had a much smaller amount of noise (but still noticeable) when the lightning flashed.

As we don't have VHF DTV stations here yet, I don't know if the noise on 7-13 will be a problem in the future.