San Francisco, CA - OTA - Page 298

Define "very strong"...

on my tv fool report the strongest station from up that way is estimated to be 25 NM, most are 20 or less, ch 6's signal and its miniscule wattage comes in at almost double that, from loma prieta

70-79+ NM...... Overload problems
60-69 NM...... Very Strong
50-59 NM.......Strong
40-49 NM.......Above Average
30-39 NM.......Average
20-29 NM.......Below Average
10-19 NM.......Fringe
0-9 NM.......Deep Fringe

I made the comment "Very strong" for the South Bay, based on the fact I can see Sutro Tower from the tall rides at Great America (Santa Clara / North San Jose)
Areas that the tower is visible (LOS) are strong and should not have reception problems.
There are some neighborhoods like South Valley, Los Gatos that are hilly and require Larger Antennas, or stacked arrays. but are not ..."out of range" of free tv.
For most of San Jose, Alum Rock, Berryessa, Rose Garden, Campbell, Willow Glen, Tv reception should not be a problem with a traditional VHF-UHF Outdoor antenna.
You need the exact same tv antenna now as in the 1970's Tv antennas are NOT getting smaller today. No such thing as HD rated antenna. Small antennas do not work.
I would not make the effort with the booster channels 35,48 trying to solve a reception problem.
You still need a VHF antenna for NBC service 8 & 12 ..... So UHF 35 to solve a VHF 7 problem does not eliminate VHF antennas from the market.
The booster channels 35 & 48 are a joke. Don't count on them.

Stations usually identify booster channels at the top of the hour, .... with the specific community the booster is to serve.
Such as boosters for the Chico-Redding area.....Plus...... KQED (13 King City), KQED (25 Watsonville), ETC.

I am guessing 35 & 48 are for special purposes only, such as a small market cable system, Mobile Home Park Cable system, Or other oddball use.

If the KGO and KTVU repeater stations on Mt. Allison in Fremont are unreliable it's because the respective station engineers don't know what they're doing. KQET on Fremont Peak has been repeating KQED for years and they don't seem to have a problem. I don't know how they're getting the signal from SF to Fremont Peak but they do. Both 35 at 12.1 KW ERP and 48 at 3.5 KW ERP have plenty of power to cover the south bay for anyone who is LOS to Mt. Allison. At 14 miles I am at a similar distance to KMMW on 28 as much of the south bay is to Mt. Allison. I'm off the back of the KMMW transmitter so I get only 340 watts ERP and I still get a NM of 43 dB. I don't want the signal to be any stronger.

Chuck

I like this description, especially since it's not based on distance. I'll have to adopt it.

Chuck

Hi,

 

KPIX (49'ers) is coming badly in the South Bay. (17:00) 10/29/2012

 

Just like last year after early rain wet the leaves. 

 

EDIT: 19:00, MyHD and Rotten tuner in HDTV are OK now.

 

HDHR & Fusion7 Dual were good all the time.

 

SHF

Edited by SFischer1 - 10/29/12 at 7:24pm

both my uhf antennas are plugged into homerun hd tuners so i can measure them on the same scale

my 91-xg has been showing mediocre reception from the sf station over the past couple of hours, far below normal, and several on the edge of the cliff or below

my clearstream uhf on the hand is showing outstanding numbers from all of the stations up there, much better than normal

I've been experiencing outstanding conditions to Sutro since yesterday. Signals were booming Monday afternoon with stations coming in I normally don't see. KGO was SNR 31 dB and the analyzer showed it was 20 dB stronger than average. KOFY was competing with KUVS. Conditions are still good this morning with many Sutro UHF stations coming in. I took pictures of KGO & KOFY at unusually strong levels.

Chuck

Conditions have either changed in the past few hours or the strong signals are only going in one direction. Signals from the north to the east are way down here in San Francisco as of 12:15. The two VHF stations, 6 and 9, from Walnut Grove are below the cliff edge, and both 3 and 58 are as well. 13 is coming in at 16 dB SNR - it's normally 19 or better, and 31 is only 17 dB and it's normally 23 to 24 dB. 42 from Mt. Diablo is normally about 25 to 26 dB; today it's only 18 dB. Channels 22, 50 and 68 from up north are all about 3 to 4 dB lower than normal.

On the other hand, the stations from Mt. Allison and Monument Peak are stronger than usual. Channel 1 is normally about 18 dB. Today it's 23 dB. 14, 36, 48 and 54 are all about 2 to 3 dB higher than normal. I'm still not receiving the two tranlators from down there, though.

Larry
SF

Larry,

In most cases with Sacramento you don't have adjacent channel issues. I guess you never receive KTXL. That might be because it's sandwiched in between the tremendously strong KCNS and KKPX signals. And KCRA is right above KFSF. My KOFY image above gives you an idea of what you're dealing with. The other obvious one is KAXT sandwiched in between KKPX and KCSM.

Signals this afternoon and down but not out.

Chuck

The bay area has a digital channel 40 .... KMMC
Sacramento 40 is not possible in most areas here.

Every dial spot has something here, with a few open ones, 11, etc
Edited by 888CALLFCC - 10/30/12 at 10:50pm

Oh yeah. I forgot about KMMC. Pretty much the same thing here, no open spots except 20 and that's used in Sacramento. I can't receive it here though. Channel 24 is still open but is allocated to KRJR who seem to be in no hurray to get their station on the air. Channel 11 in the Bay Area is allocated to KOTR, another station in no hurray to get on the air. I still think a lot of these LP stations are not going to materialize by the deadline.

The strangest case over here is KAZV analog 14 which is a rare example of an LP station with locally produced programming but yet they don't even have an application in for a digital station.

Chuck

Strong Inversions Next Week

I just saw the extended Forecast Discussion and they are predicting strong inversions for next week with warmer temps up here in the foothills than in the valleys, especially at night. Signals will probably go crazy next week with both enhanced and degraded periods. Fall inversions are often the strongest of the year.

Chuck

Super Duct

About 5 pm I turned on the DVR to program it for tonight's shows and it was tuned to KSBW (210 deg) with the antennas pointed to Walnut Grove (270 deg) and the Signal Quality is 100%. Huh?? Something is going on.

I turned the antennas to Salinas and found the strongest signals I had ever seen. Enhanced signals from Salinas are common here. Almost everyday there are periods of above average signals but this was a whole new level. I took some pictures. Below is a comparison between KUVS which is 14 miles LOS and 58 KW ERP in my direction and KSBW 20.6 KW omni and 115 miles over a 1 edge path. They're the same strength! It turns out if I take everything in the system into account that the difference in total gain between UHF and VHF is <1 dB so it's a fair comparison.

I've also included an image of KCBA on RF 13 (60 watts ERP in my direction) and a TV screen shot of KMCE on RF 46 (100watts ERP in my direction) both on Fremont Peak at 115 miles. This was the first time I've been able to decode KMCE since it's co-channel with 600 KW KQCA. It's one thing to get KCBA on a clear channel but quite another for a station to overcome a co-channel local.

Note that the adjacent channel sidebands are at least 20 dB lower on KSBW than they are on KUVS. If KUVS was a clean as KSBW I wouldn't have so much trouble with KOFY.

Chuck

I'll have to check more frequently to see what I find here.

I wish I was looking yesterday evening when you were receiving the super signals. It would have been fun to see if we were getting the same effects.

Larry
SF

Hi Team!

Just joined this forum to ask a simple question about getting Digital OTA up and running in time for the election on Tuesday. I have a Sony HDTV purchased in 2008, no antenna and my tv is now saying,

"If you can see this message, the tv you're watching is not ready for Comcast's digital enhancements."

Hunh? I called the Comcast number and they said I needed a thingy to receive the signal OTA. They made it sound like the thingy was not simply an antenna, as if they wanted to sell me some of their equipment.

My question: If I go to Radio Shack or some other store, how simple is it going to be to set up my television to watch PBS on election night? Will it be in HD? Do I just need an antenna? I want to do this as inexpensively as possible. Any help/links would be very much appreciated and I apologize if this question has been covered in the forum (my eyes glazed over with all the technical stuff when I searched through)

Cheers!

What is the model number of your Sony? Does the manual say it has a digital tuner? I would think that any TV purchased in 2008 would have digital tuner and you just need to connect an antenna to it but it might be possible that you have just a monitor. I don't know anything about Comcast or what that message means.

Chuck

Kai, the message means that you've been watching Comcast's analog TV transmissions until now, even though your set almost certainly has a digital tuner that will enable you to watch their digital transmissions of the local channels. You just need to perform a channel scan to let the TV find those channels. Then you can delete the analog ones that no longer work. You're in for a treat if that set has a big screen because you'll be able to watch the local channels in HDTV instead of the standard resolution that you've been watching.

Without information about your location, it's not possible to guess how your OTA reception would be. (But if your TV really doesn't have a digital tuner you won't be able to watch OTA on it either, since there are no more analog broadcasts to speak of)

Hot Weather , Fast cooling .... Inversion Layers... anyone ?
I'm not currently checking the conditions, but here, I think low power VHF 3 "could" possibly show up. If I unfold the monster 20'x10' antenna
My location has two tv market tower locations in exact alignment to the exact degree. (Fremont Peak, Salinas & the Santa Maria Stations KSBY location)
Testing a low gain - ultra low noise amplifier.
A few no-lock stations show some very low signals here with it.
KTVU-48 .........4%
KCBA-13......... 5% constant
? .........22 .........1%
KGO....35 ......... None
KICU...36....Lock......37% Airplane & helicopter will cause problems on this one.
KQEH 50....Lock.....46% Reliable, for a severly blocked transmitter location to here.
KSBW 8 .....Lock......1% to 49% bouncy possibly multipath & co-channel problems .... Morning & Night reception only. Longer lock periods with this amp. 2 to 3 hours. Not 24 hours.
KDTS 8 ........... sometimes appears weekly / monthly at night.

Typical strong inversion conditions here as I expected. Walnut Grove was in the dumps last night. I recorded programs off the Salinas stations which were all strong but not quite like that other day. KSEE Fresno was coming in yesterday for a short time. This should be over on Thursday until the next high pressure system.

Chuck

Crazy swings in my neck of the woods. My hdhr shows 100 one minute and 50 the next on all channels. Never seen it this wild.

I've been monitoring the distant signals here for the past few days and they've been all over the place. Sometimes the two VHF stations from Walnut Grove are way up while the UHF signals are down, or the UHF signals are up and the VHF signals are below the cliff edge. They haven't all been up above normal at the same time for some reason. I have been able to actually watch the levels changing up and down on my SNR signal strength meter on my Sony TV as much as 10 dB over the course of a half hour.

Today the Walnut Grove stations were all at about normal levels, but KEMO 50 from Mt. Saint Helena was booming in here with a signal of 30.5 dB! That's the strongest I've seen the station in here. Normally it's in the 24 to 25 dB range and goes up to about 28 dB max. 30 dB from a transmitter running just 20 kW located 65 miles away is pretty good, I'd say. Their Azteca HD looks really good, too.

KRCB 22 and KTLN 68 were both up a little today, too, but not as extreme as KEMO.

On the other hand, the stations from Monument Peak and Mt. Allison have been down for the past few days. KAXT channel 1 is usually around 17 to 19 dB, but for the past few days it's been below the cliff edge around 13 to 14 dB.

I have a feeling that with the changes in the weather with colder, rainy weather coming in, things will soon be back to normal for a while.

Larry

It looks like my days of watching OTA HDTV are numbered.

We have been enjoying OTA for the last couple of years after I put up a simple rabbit ears antenna in my patio (based on some great suggestions from folks on this forum). Now, we are moving to the east bay (Dublin) to be more specific. I punched in my new address in to Antennaweb.org and it only shows a handful of channels coming through. TVfool.com is showing that I need a roof-mounted multi-directional antenna to pick up all the network channels.

Given that we are going to have to deal with an HOA, this is probably going to be unlikely that I can put up a big antenna on my roof. As of now, I am not very hopeful.

If any of you have suggestions about Attic mounted antenna or a roof-mounted antennas that might work, I would love to hear them.

The further west (closer to the mountains) you are, the less viable is an antenna. Going further to the east, is more viable as the signal has more chance to diffract over the mountains.

We'd need to see your TVFool plot to analyze possibilities.

Keep in mind that it is illegal under federal law for HOAs and the like to prohibit antennas for local TV reception.

As stated above, the HOA cannot deny you a TV antenna. I've come down to a couple of recommendations for outdoor TV antennas; high VHF/UHF combo - Winegard HD7698P; separate high VHF/UHF - Winegard YA-1713 and Antennas Direct 91XG. The 91XG has the best pattern of any UHF antenna I know of. I don't think the YA-1713 is all that great but there are few commercial choices. I have 2 designs for high VHF antennas that are much better but they are DIY projects; my log periodic and a wideband yagi. Some months back there were a couple discussions of OTA in the Dublin area. You could search for those.

On another subject, OTA was really ugly up here the last few days with the strong inversions but this morning all signals are close to nominal. My friend in Placerville noted that a couple nights ago he could only receive one digital station and nothing from SF either, some of the worst conditions ever.

Chuck

Here is the TVfool plot:

http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=29&q=id%3dcc4966b54b6465


It looks like I am 3.5 miles away from Foothill rd, which roughly would be the base of the nearest hills. I am not sure if this is far enough to be outside the shadow zone, so to speak.

I will check into the rules of the HOA. I have seen a few satellite dishes mounted to the side of the buildings in the neighborhood, so they probably let you do it as long as not conspicuous.
Edited by antidodge - 11/8/12 at 10:57am

Chuck,

Thanks for your recommendations. It looks like the 91XG is directional, so I may have to have a rotor to receive both the San Jose and Sutro Tower signals.

Don't feel bad. Mine is not really any better, I get decent reception using the 91xg and a Winegard YA-1713 into a UHV/VHF joiner/combiner, then a ultra-low noise amplifier from http://www.kitztech.com. I've pointed them *between* sutro and san bruno, and I've got a huge hill in the way..

http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=29&q=id%3d60b5e8269181f7

And this is the list of stations my HDHomerun can get right now:

2.1 KTVU-HD
2.2 KTVU-SD
4.1 KRON-HD
4.2 KRON-SD
5.1 KPIX-DT
7.1 KGO-HD
7.2 LIVWELL
7.3 LWSD
11.1 KNTV HD
11.2 CA-NS
13.1 KOVR-DT
19.2 KUVS.2
20.1 KOFY-HD
20.2 MeTV
22.1 KRCB-DT
22.2 KRCB-C
22.3 KRCB-FM
32.1 KMTP-DT
32.2 WorldCh
32.4 WTV
32.5 NTD
32.6 KPOP
38.1 MundoFO
38.2 KCNS-2
38.3 KCNS-3
38.4 KCNS-4
38.5 KCNS
42.1 KTNC-SF
42.2 KTNC-SA
42.3 KTNC-Th
42.4 KTNC-Br
44.1 KBCW-DT
50.1 KEMO-HD
50.2 KEMO-SD
64.1 KTFK-DT
66.1 KFSF-DT
66.2 KDTV-DT
68.1 KTLN-DT
68.2 CRTV
68.3 SBN

That location is tough.... Stations with a NM at zero or below require professional extreme measures....Not a DIY learner project.
You may need cable tv for a CBS network channel.
You can clearly see the advantage of VHF station channels -vs- UHF station channels in this tvfool report.
Expect all green channels,.. plus
KVIE-9 (6-1)
KGO-7
KXTV-10
KNTV-12 (11-1)

Computers have been wrong before. So let us know what appears differently.

Chuck:

Anyway one could find out how to make these high vhf antennas you speak of?