Wilmington, NC - HDTV - Page 66

I have TSReader data showing it as 10-1.

- Trip

Thanks for the info...I was trying to tune to 10-1. By the way. I am in the Sunset Park area of the city.

WILM maps to 10-1 on both my Dish receiver and a MyHD mdp-130 tuner card, come to think of it, it also maps to 10-1 on both my "backup" HDTV's... (but yes, you have to tune to channel 40)

Hey everybody,

Just want to update WILM's issues with DirecTV customers. Below is the response we have gotten from our inquiries:


Basically, every LP station in the country just got booted from DirecTV's Guide Lineup making it impossible to tune LP's in using their equipment. Our Station Manager has already contacted DirecTV but the issue is not yet resolved. I will post an update if and when DirecTV chooses to change their new policy. I would also suggest DirecTV subscribers affected by this issue contact DirecTV and give them your opinion on the matter as paying customers.

I want to make sure everyone understands that there is not an issue with WILM's signal. Our engineers have thoroughly checked our signal and we are transmitting at our full capabilities. If you have any questions, again, please feel free to contact us at anytime.

Steve

Someone needs to sue D* over this for unfairly disadvantaging LPTV stations. It's bad enough they don't carry LPTV stations on satellite.

- Trip

I would call, and tell them first about my dissatisfaction, and if they don't want to do anything about my loss, I would then tell them you are contacting the better business bureau, and do so. Prices keep going up, and everything else involved with the services is declining. As long as they get their monies, that is all they care about it seems.

wow, i am envious that you were able to get fox and nbc.

I am in wilmington.
didn't really put too much effort into getting WILM OTA, as I am getting the NY CBS feed.
which is fine by me...

...plus I am only using an indoor omnidirectional antenna.

Hell, just call DirecTv and tell them you'll switch to Dish--from what I've read, and personal experience with my Parents' DirecTv receiver, the Dish receivers are way more friendly to use...

I've got the old Radio Shack 15-1880 (discontinued) amplified antenna up in my attic, and can receive all OTA with no problem (in Monkey Junction area)...

Wow,
I will have to call Directv about this. I have been with them for 14 years, but I won't hesitate to switch. Watching CBS in standard def sucks. Thanks

Picking up WILM now on my standard def bedroom TV with Digital stream converter. I deliberately deleted WNCT 9-1 (10) from the memory and then scanned until I passed 10, then plugged back in the coax to pick up everything else including WILM 40-1, but it still would not pick up PSIP and revert to 10-1. I guess I am too far to gather all the data or something... It's weird is all I can say. I cannot decode the signal at all on my living room LCD I guess because it is a longer cable run, but before when I got it in there, I couldn't get it but on 40 either. Just thought I'd share my experiment!

Here's my antenna. Notice the screen I added down the middle for picking up VHF channels 10 and 12

Just called DTV and of course they know nothing about the problem with WILM.
I did receive $20 off a month for 6 months. Worth a call. They will contact me about options for CBSHD.

After spending the last couple of hours running another cable from my attic to the back of my tv, I just noticed that 10-1 is back in the directv guide. Well that was a waste of my time. Guess directv backed off here in wilmington. Nationwide???? I didn't want to chance watching the local CBS in SD if good sports might be on.

Well Crap!! Gone again, What's up with that?

Just want to give you all an update with WILM on DirecTV. As of Friday, they have added our information back into the Program Guide, which we're very happy about. Unfortunately, this has only worked intermediately, as jagmonster noted. We're not sure what DirecTV is doing to cause this, but suspect it may be temporary as they reverse their recent changes. Please keep us informed if the fix is not permanent. Thanks.

Anybody here from the west side of the towers, preferably the Whiteville area?

I have my parents set up to get OTA HD locals using a Dish Network Vip722 with an attic mount DB4 inspired DIY antenna centered on channel 37 using the design info from Lumenlabs. They actually get both WLM and MB/Florence stations really well...signals in the 70-90 range (722's scale) depending on station. However, WWAY and WECT lose signal for a second or two every say 3 minutes (sometimes less/more frequent) despite WSFX never missing a beat (WILM never scans, as expected*). I was hoping it was a problem with the STB (developed other problems as well), but I installed a replacement 722 yesterday and it's doing the same thing with OTA, suggesting the problem may be with the WECT/WWAY signals instead of the Vip722's OTA tuner as I'd hoped.

Any thoughts or ideas, especially from our lurking station reps? It would really be nice if my folks could watch the HD feeds out of WLM instead of either using the SD sat feeds or resorting to the SC OTA for ABC.

*Fortunately, they can receive WBTW OTA, which is transmitting in 5.1! Only hiccup is regional sports where WBTW might choose an SEC or national game instead of the regional ACC.

Thanks.

-Brent

riverwolf,

sounds like you have your antenna pointing toward Dillon. You might be getting a little ghosting on channels 44 and 46. On analog, this would look like a smeared image, but with digital, it causes interruption of signal. You would do better with two antennas pointing each way with a VHF hi band pointing to Dillon for WBTW 13.1 and the UHF pointing toward Delco for all the Wilmington stuff. Get what they call a UHF/VHF joiner, (not a splitter)

http://www.summitsource.com/product_...oducts_id=8600

You run the two antenna lines (RG-6) to an easy access point near the TV. ( you could also do it in the attic) This will allow the bands to stay separated in case of strong radio or cell towers.

Nope, I wasn't concered about SC at all during aiming and split the difference between the two Wilmington towers...face is pointed somewhere around 120° magnetic, based on a TVFool map for my parents' house showing the Delco and Winnabow towers at 111° and 130°. That puts the SC stations nearly edge on to the bowties (per the TVfool radar) with 13,16,18,21,31 and 36 all coming in rock solid AFAIK. Also no problems with WSFX (real 30), which is on the same tower as WECT/WWAY.

-Brent

That's interesting. I like to read reception reports like this. It backs up my experiences where most of the time, people near the fringe of a digital station get better (no breakup) reception than people closer to the towers. You might want to try a device called an attenuator in back of the TV to lower the signal of WECT and WWAY. This will take away the overload effect. It's cheap enough and often times solves problems. If you happen to have a regular splitter handy, try going through that first behind the TV to see if that weakens things enough.

I'm not sure I'd call 33-38 miles all that close to the towers (distance from parents to Delco/Winnabow). WSFX, which never has an issue for them, reports a higher signal strength on the Vip722 than WECT or WWAY so I don't think overload is an issue. BTW, my Pine Valley location is only 17-21 miles in case you were thinking Whiteville is closer than Wilmington to either tower.

The SC Fox/ABC/CBS stations are actually closer to my folks at 29-33 miles. They're coming in from 246°/273° magnetic with the antenna faces at 120°/300° (no reflector; 4 bay bowtie).

You have got me thinking about one possible technical issue, but I won't be able to test it until my next visit. The Vip722 is one of Dish's 2 room capable boxes. The second room controls the TV2 tuner via a UHF remote. Due to distance issues, I did the antenna relocate config to put the UHF receiving antenna at the TV2 location instead of on the STB itself. Normally, the Dish diagrams recommend putting an included attenuator at the antenna in this config, but the installer apparently took the unused attenuator with him at the initial install (a common practice). Supposedly, this config without the attenuator enables the TV2 backfeed to become a low powered transmitter. However, the remote is transmitting at 390MHz and 40/46 are at 630/650MHz and no other channels show the interruption so that doesn't appear to be a likely cause of interference. Even the backfeed to TV2 is on channel 60 which is 750ish Mhz.

Thanks.

-Brent

Hmmm, it should be the opposite, with WSFX being weaker. It is for me in Jacksonville with the antenna above. WWAY 98% WECT 97% and WSFX 80-85% You have some sort of interference somewhere, or your antenna feed lines are out of phase. check the feed lines to be sure they aren't too close or touching somewhere... also fiddle with the balun, or replace it - but I'd start with the issue of the dish receiver and go from there.

Looks like Directv has worked the bugs out for 10-1 in their guide. No problems since the weekend, knock on wood.

Long time lurker on the forums here.

I am near Surf City NC, with a 17 element uhf corner reflector yagi pointing towards winnabow, at about 15 feet above the ground. I am surrounded by pine trees and various other hardwoods.

The yagi antenna I am using is the UHF end cut from a VHF/UHF outdoor antenna, and a simple cheap-o DTV converter box I bought for around 10.00 online. There is no pre-amp or anything else in line with the feedline currently. I plan on installing a home made 8 bay bowtie for UHF and point it towards Greenville & New Bern sometime in the next few weeks.

I did a rescan on the converter tonight, and found that we are in the midst of some skip or possibly some ducting of some sort.

Here are the channels and signal strengths I am receiving as of 9:00 pm local time this evening:
(This is in addition to the locals, WWAY, WECT, WSFX, PBS out of Wilmington and the station in Sneads Ferry on 35).

I regulary receive WTVD WITN WNCT and WILM at night, viewable signal but somewhat weak)

WILM-10 CBS LP Wilmington - 80%
WITN-7 NBC Washington/Greenville - 40%
WNCT-9 CBS Greenville NC - 35-40%
WFXI-8 Fox Morehead City - 30%
WPDE-15 Florence, SC - 50%
WLFL-22 Raleigh - 25%
WRDC-28 NBC Raleigh - 70%
WFXB-43 Myrtle Beach SC - 50%
WRAZ-50 Raleigh - 25%
WCBD-2 Charleston SC - 35%
WTVD-11 ABC Raleigh/Durham NC - 40%
WRAL-5 CBS Raleigh - 40%
WCTI-12 New Bern NC - 30%
NBC17 (out of Raleigh) - 25%

Now I wish I had my homemade 8 bay bowtie up and point towards Greenville or New Bern. I modeled my bowtie after the older design of the ChannelMaster version with the wire mesh screen.

I know this may not the the right forum, but I thought it might be interesting to someone else out there in the Wilmington NC DMA. I wonder what I could pull in with my antennae up 50 ft on my radio tower in the year yard above the tree tops.

I consider OTA & HD reception a hobby, stemming from a way for my kid to get PBS Kids in his room without paying for another converter from the cable company. If I could get all of these channels on a regular basis I would drop DirecTV altogether (former Charter customer here), but I'm sure these conditions will not last long.

If you're interested in some info I've saved for an 8-bay:

http://forums.snapstream.com/vb/home...iever-now.html

I'm going to build one also, one of these days, I'd like to get my little Radio Shack antenna out of the attic... but I'm going to be concentrating more now on coming up with some kind of ham antenna...

Cool! Yes last night I was getting most of the Charleston stations, WMMP1 on 36 and WTAT on 24 plus WCBD which you caught. I also had WFXB and WILM.

It's funny you can get WTVD and I can't. I get all the others. I have been having some problems with my pre-amp in the VHF area, but not in the UHF. I think something is going out in it. Last night I could barely get WNCT but this morning when I woke up it came in at 90+

I think if you got / built a better UHF ant, you would get much more solid readings.

I was amazed I was getting all of those stations last night. The signals were so strong at one point, I was getting a PBS station tagged as "2" and was getting WCBD on the same tag on my box. The skip lasted until around 0500 for me. Now keep in mind, all of these stations were coming in with a clean, viewable signal with my corner reflector yagi pointed towards Winnabow. I did think about climbing the ladder and swinging the antenna towards Raleigh to see what I could get, but I got busy and forgot all about it.

I agree on the antenna, however, the current UHF yagi I am using works very well, since it has 17 director elements and 10 (I think) elements on the corner reflector. I don't know what the actual gain on the thing is, but I know it is working well. The 8 bay I have built will work very well I'm sure, but I haven't been able to find a Winegard combiner so I can bring both antennas together. I want to keep my yagi pointing towards Winnabow and aim the 8 bay bowtie towards the Greenville/New Bern area.

Here is a pic of the 8 bay I built. Its not the best picture in the world, but I will get better pics of both antennas here soon.

Great work! Back when I was active in ham radio antenna building was my favorite thing. we lived in the country when I was a kid and we had a wire factory in town so I built all kinds of crazy stuff.
Just a note on skip. In traditional parlance what you were seeing was ducting. This is when dense cold air forms over warm air and VHF and UHF signals are "pipelined" unusal distances. (Greater than line of sight)
Skip is for much lower frequencies and are reflected at much higher altitudes due to inonization. Now that I am reading this I realized I may be telling you something you already know.

I am a ham as well, and have been since my 13th birthday, 20 years ago.
I openly use the term "skip" since lots of people don't understand what ducting is. I built this antenna with the remainder of the parts of the VHF/UHF directional I cut the UHF yagi from, mostly the beams and plastic insulators. The elements on the bowtie are #8 solid copper wire, and the wire mesh is 1/2" mesh wire from Lowe's. It took me about 30 minutes to build this one. As soon as I can get a decent combiner or some other way to connect my two antennae together facing 180* apart, I will really get to test this bad boy...

Well, I sat and thought about it this afternoon. I got my home made 8 bay bowtie installed (temporarily) on the mast with all of the my other antennae. It is only about 12 feet above ground, hardly above the metal roof of my place here. It is pointing slightly towards the east from north. I connected it to a regular (higher grade) 2-way catv splitter along with the corner reflector yagi, which is still pointing towards winnabow.

The splitter has a 3.5db insertion loss, but apprently that hasn't caused too much loss, as of yet. I cannot pull in the South Carolina stations like I was last night, but the big players in the RDU area as well as WNCT, WITN and WCTI to the east are coming in at almost 100%.

I am also bringing in the UNC-TV stations in Chapel Hill, Wilmington, Edenton, New Bern and Lumberton.

Now I guess it is time to design a permanent mast style mount for the 8 bay and figure out which way I want to aim it. It is designed for UHF from all of the plans I have read, but it seems to be doing well on high end VHF as well...

-- Edit @ 1214am 4-3-10 --
Around 1130 pm tonight, I decided to take my portable tv and DTV converter box up on the ladder and run just on the bowtie. Man was I surprised to pull in WBOC (transmitter licenses to Salisbury MD), with the antenna aimed NNE-NE and several other ION and other stations in North Carolina. I also pulled in WTKR out of Roanoke Va.

With it pointed towards Winnabow, I received several SCETV stations (similar to UNC-TV here), the strongest was in Florence and WCNC out of Charlotte as well as the local stations here and the Univision station in Fayetteville.
Man I wish I could get this antenna higher....

Good morning for DXers, I am watching WWAY, WSFX and PBS out of Wilmington as well as WTAT in Charleston from Fort Mill SC. Both stations are in the 80's on signal from my outdoor antenna at 37ft. It is interesting seeing 3-1 and 3-2 twice from Charlotte and Wilmington. BTW on the radio side, Getting Nags Head radio station.