Cleveland, OH - HDTV - Page 56

I agree, WVIZ had a good idea (still in analog though, with no sub-channels). But I see that should change sometime soon, as they have a pending application for digital.

I just wish the rest of these channels (especially WOIO) would consider the same thing....Thompson is a perfect location when you consider the terrain around it. It's the northernmost hill in Geauga County, and it's LOS to much of Lake and most of Astabula County. The perfect spot.

And I understand that Medina, Lorain, and southern Summit County all matter...But Lake County has a lot of people in it too, and I would have to think that they'd like to get a quality signal to the 200,000+ people in their market that currently don't have one.

Then again, maybe they just assume everyone in Lake County is wealthy enough to afford cable or dish...But if they need an FYI, many people in Ashtabula County aren't.

A real eye opener! However too much good signal covers the lake and the south & west sides suffer.

Perhaps a little less power (don't want the Canadians to complain) will still serve the intended market area i.e. Lake and Ashtabula counties.

Speaking of the WVIZ translator, I always wondered why Eastlake was listed as one of the COL's when that signal does not even come close to covering Eastlake? (btw: how is it that this translator has multipe COL's when it's just one translator)?

How about a different location all together? Where is the high point of Ashtabula County? The farther away from the lakefront the better. I wonder if a translator there would serve most of Lake County?

There is no need for much overlap from the main signals out of Parma (as would be the case with the Geauga/51 location).

What did people in Lake and Ashtabula counties do for TV before the days of cable or digital? I recall watching a pristine picture from TOLEDO! at a friends house in Willoughby (south of Euclid Ave. on the small ridge). There is no ground clutter between the Toledo transmitter site in Oregon, OH and Willoughby. Granted, atmospheric conditions had to be just right, but the quality of the picture was as good as a local station, in fact better than any of the low VHF stations out of Cleveland. I know parts of Ashtabula County got CFPL as if it was a local station (especially in Conneaut where Erie's ch 12 was also a "local")

The high points in Ashtabula County would cause the same problems for most of Lake County: Geauga County is still in the way.

It's really a simple answer. Place the translators in Thomspon (and null out all signal radiation to the southwest) and there it is: Great coverage for most of Lake and all of Ashtabula Counties.


As for Canadian stations in Ashtabula County....On certain days during the summer, I've picked up stations as far away as Barrie, Ontario....To the south, I've picked up a religious station in Abingdon, Virginia (probably my farthest pickup to date). To the east, Altoona, Pa....Also have hit Toledo, Detroit, Columbus, Athens, Morgantown, Ft. Wayne, Buffalo, and Rochester. And where I'm at, Pittsburgh and Steubenville/Wheeling is almost a nightly occurrence in the summer.

This isn't the first time I heard about this. My friend goes to NASCAR races, and several years back, he went to a race somewhere in GA. He was telling me on his way back to Cleveland, he could get 2 stations all the way from where he was in GA, to where they faded out not too terribly far from the Ohio border (via i-77 I believe near OH). He did think they were in the Carolinas somewhere, and he listens to Country music. An FCC query of WESC shows they put out 100 KW ERP vertical and horizontal with "beam tilt", and the stick is almost 1300 METERS above sea level, almost 400 meters above local terrain.

The LD translator from Thompson won't reach Conneaut and might be weak on the eastern side of Ashtabula. WVIZ has a second analog translator license (COL Conneaut but actually near Kingsville) for just 146 watts. There's an application for a 2 kW LD to replace it that would extend the coverage eastward.

I am aware of WVIZ's translator in Thompson, and here's the issues I have with that:

When they go digital; 11kw way up on UHF Channel 63 isn't exactly going to cut it when talking distance. They also don't have a very tall antenna at all....If they could boost their power a bit more (that is, if the FCC would even allow it), and they added a few hundred more feet to their antenna, it would do a world of good for them. It also seems like their radiation pattern is omni-directional. If they null out the southwest, that would in effect add more strength to the rest of their signal.

Who knows, though? I'm sure the FCC has probably restricted them from doing anything more than what they have in place...But even as it is now, if every other station in Cleveland did the exact same thing, the folks in Eastern Lake and Ashtabula Counties would at least have a chance at getting some Cleveland on their TV's (which they don't have now).

The WKSU cluster got it right too-they've got quite a potent WKSU repeater (WKSV) in Thompson. There are a couple amateur radio repeaters on the WENZ radio tower. The antenna for the 2 Meter repeater is about 25' from the top. The greater Cleveland area is covered pretty well. The Akron area does well also, although it does start to get marginal around Canton. And believe it or not, most of Ashtabula County is covered well too. But as many have mentioned, the valley towards the lake is problematic. Newbury is still too far south to provide adequate coverage to Eastern Lake and Northern Ashtabula County. I really don't think there is a spot that would sufficiently cover the Cleveland area and all of Lake, Geauga, and Ashtabula counties.

By the way, W63CT has to find a new frequency eventually. It would make absolutely no sense to put a DTV station on channel 63. The last time I checked, their pattern primarily favors north and west already. I am roughly 15 miles southwest of Thompson, and I can get a marginal but still watchable signal on 63.

Likely why 51's transmitter is in Newbury, yet will not reach the COL of Kirtland, yet makes it all the way to Parma (??)

63 is shaky for me to providing none to a snowy signal in Mentor, I believe WVIZ is going to apply for Digital 38 in Thompson (since a Canton station decided to go elsewhere) & another for Conneaut. I haven't looked on 63 lately as I thought it was down, & is 64 still exist as the WVIZ translator in Conneaut?

I used to make that trip often from Athens Georgia (where I could recieve WESC most of the time) or the Spartanburg area to Cleveland back in the '90s. The Charlotte station was WEND 106.5 (The End Alternative Rock) ... both those locked pretty steady untill a few miles into WVA along I-77, .. at that point the fading became an annoyance.

WESC has a very large coverage area, & pretty good for the hilly terrain, was unsure if they used translators or repeaters.

That the 7.015 machine by any chance? I thought it was farther north.


I think this area is pretty much out of assignments unfortunately, & since Canada is too the north....

The FCC granted construction permit for the 11 kW LD translator is for channel 38, the filed application for the 2 kw LD translator is for channel 44. Wonder if Trip could show us coverage of these two planned translators as well as one from Thompson with a 15 kw ERP nulled to the southwest and with a higher HAAT?

Wow, I totally missed that, my dumb-a$$ thought they were staying on 63! ....But yeah, I would like to see 15kw with a higher HAAT as well. Could be interesting.

I have a nifty TV Query exactly for stuff like this.

http://www.rabbitears.info/tvq.php?p...m&request=list

Click the checkmark icon under "Map" to see the coverage map.

- Trip

They have to vacate 63 because that spectrum has been sold to cellphone companies. WXOX had to leave 65 for the same reason. All LD's have to be reassigned to channels 52 and below.

They just need to move the tower ~10 miles to the east to hit Conneaut and the eastern part of Ashtabula County. There is no need for the coverage to hit far western Lake County & Euclid. What is the elevation due south of Geneva ?

It's about 200 to 400 feet lower than Thompson, depending on location. I personally think that more power and height would do just fine in Thompson (with a different radiation pattern)...But if they insisted on Ashtabula County, they couldn't go any farther south than Harpersfield (right below Geneva). Any farther south, and Thompson will become an obstruction for Lake County.

Well, I got my pre-amp. Got here pretty quick. Actually next day!
So I plugged it in, but still same thing. No 19 at all. In-fact, it didn't improve much. Probably because, first, I have this thing in my office room, second, it is hooked up all with like 6-10 pieces of cabling. I need to go to RS and get some coax crimp tools, cable and some connectors and do this thing right.

try www.monoprice.com

you'll have to wait a few days for shipping but you will pay a fraction of the cost of radio shack.

What antenna are you using? (sorry if you already posted this info on previous pages, I did not see it if you already posted that info). It appears to me your antenna is not getting any VHF signals. Keep in mind that WOIO is virtual ch 19, it's actually Rf ch 10. Ch 8 is ch 8 however, also VHF. The lower the channel number the larger the elements have to be to receive the frequency. To get ch 8 requires elements that are 2.5 feet long, ch 10 just slightly less than that. If you elements are all under a foot than it's UHF only and that's the reason you are not getting results. No amplifier can make up for the wrong antenna.

According to Tripp's Longly-Rice coverage map for WKBN-DT, Rf ch 41 would be a good alternative for CBS & FOX for Ashtabula County, especially south of Rt. 6, but there is even some green "fingers" north of 6. Unfortunately Lake County and virtually anywhere north of I-90 (except for some orange fragments in Geneva on the Lake) is totally out of the picture.

Other far-flung green areas include the ridge in Richfield! And I get them virtually 24/7 in an "orange" area of Parma.

http://www.rabbitears.info/contour.php?appid=1341322&map=Y

The WKBN antenna is 2500 feet above sea level. Increasing the antenna heights in Parma by 500 feet would cover Ashtabula County a lot better too.

All of the Youngstown market does pretty well in Ashtabula County...The only problem with them is, they pretend we don't exist (I've never seen one story related to anything in Ashtabula County). Same goes for Erie...Cleveland is the only market that will occasionally do an Ashtabula news story (which I find ironic, seeing as it's their market that we can't get OTA)...

But hey, I guess that's what my DirecTV is for (after all, you can't live in the snow-belt and NOT be able to see the ONLY weatherman SPECIFICALLY trained in Lake-Effect Forecasting, right?)...What a joke.

On a serious note however, as much as I love Youngstown's Stan Boney (mostly because of his name), he's no Mark Johnson. Anytime there's severe weather, I gotta have my News Channel 5 (well, at least until the dish goes out).

Yeah that's the one. It's off the air right now because there's a problem with the antenna.

maxxym: I'd be curious to know if you are able to get WOIO more reliably by tomorrow evening since a cold front is going to come through the area. That should put a lid on any tropospheric ducting that may be occurring over the lake. If your reception problems clear up, then I would say it's a good bet that you were getting interference from CFPL during this recent spell of warm weather

I am using Antennacraft® HBU33 High-VHF/UHF Antenna.

I was able to pick up 19 with it for about a day. Then it went away.
I am picking up 8 without problems.

Maybe I should "rescan"?

If your receiver already has the identity for WOIO (both 19.1 & 19.2) then you should not need to rescan.

More than likely skip from CFPL is to blame. I don't know what they were smoking when WOIO was assigned RF 10. CFPL used to come in like a local station every summer when I lived in Euclid and was carried by cable back in the 80's. The signal was picked up year round off a tower along I-271. I don't believe CFPL cut back on their power or direction over the years since then. The only thing blocking us from getting CFPL today is WOIO.

I wonder if Tripp has a program to show the effect CFPL-TV has on WOIO-DT?

WOIO needs to get it's butt off RF 10 ASAP!

I *think* I read somewhere that Canadian TV stations will have to be all digital sometime in August of this year? If so, both sides of the border may be just "waiting it out", as by the time any permits get going to modify, it will be Canada's digital switchover time anyways. Just hope CFPL doesn't choose to stay on channel 10 RF in digital. If CFPL changes freq., maybe WOIO can up their power?

The date is Aug. 31 and while CFPL has a companion frequency (channel 57) they are not required and AFAIK have not started to broadcast a digital signal yet. That probably means that they intend to flash-cut on channel 10.