Minneapolis, MN - OTA - Page 55

sweet. I saw a thread here about it in the tehnical area
solidsignal has then for like $80 shipped (little less than that).....might have to grab one

What tuners are you using? Is one better than the others for DXing? Are any HD?

I mainly was using the Zenith converter box (DTT901) but I found that my 32" AOC HDTV (I dont know model #...I picked it up on clearance at Rat Shack a year ago) has a more sensitive tuner than the Zenith will (logs channels easier). The Zenith shows a small yellow bar and "BAD" (wont log a channel) yet the AOC does log channels with no issues.

My 5 year old Panny Plasma takes way to long to scan in channels when I do that (plus it scans everything whereas the AOC has an add on scan option). Friday night it took 25 minutes to do a scan. (normally takes like 7 or 8)

Tonights "goodies"
the 2 usuals....WDSE 8 & KBJR 5 (RF19) from Duluth

went up on the roof with the 7" TV and the Zenith
turned the HBU44 manually SE and grabbed KTTC 10 Rochester (nothing else)...turned that back to Mpls
turned the YA1713 NE and got WDSE 8 and WDIO 10....10 died within a minute and 8 held for a while

Also got KCCO 7 from Alex...but since its the same as WCCO 4 its not really a "good one"
Moved that back to facing SW to grab KEYC12 before they signed off for the night

See above for a picture of my Antenna. If you click on the picture you get a larger version of it. I have trouble getting Duluth. Where are you located and are you high up? I do get Austin's KAAL 6.1 RF 36 most easily. It comes in nearly every morning and evening. In the lower right hand corner you can see the RCA ANT 751 on the back of the DIRECTV dish. The RCA antenna normally feeds my HD Tivo. It occasionally picks up Duluth as well. From where I am, Shoreview and Duluth come from the same direction.
Edited by Runch Machine - 7/22/12 at 8:30am

FYI, KAAL 36 comes off the same tower as KXLT 47 (RF 46) and KSMQ 15 (RF 20). Do those come in at all?

Yes, they all 3 regularlly come in, however 47 is the least likely to come in. 15 comes in fairly often, but 6 comes in nearly every morning and evening. I also get 8 and 10 but not as often as the others. When I aim the antenna East, I get WEAU 13.1 RF 38. A few times I've also gotten 15.1 and 27.1 from Madison.

Do you know where 8 and 10 transmit from?
I also get KIMT fairly often.

8 broadcasts north of LaCrosse (near Holman, WI)
10 broadcasts a smidge east of where 6,15&47 are

I'm between the Ren Festival and Mistake Lake. I have the antennas on top of my 2 story townhouse (well its 3 stories but 3/4 of the basement is under ground)
on one pole is the HBU44 & HBU33
on the other pole is the YA1713 (and as of a week ago a 36" dish to get a free to air satellite that is real low on the horizon and I needed to clear trees to get the satellite.

The 44 is split 2 ways right behind the TV for the TV and the AM21 for Directv...and easy disconnect from the splitter to scan DX'ing
The 33 is split 4 ways to the bedroom, computer room, basement and the neighbors garage (yup thats right.....he has cable and cant get a line to the garage. I have a drop ceiling in basement he doesn't. SO we ran a line and drilled a hole between the garages)
The 1713 is for Mankato and is tapped into the AM21 (with a joiner)...

KTTC 10 is southeast of the 6/15/47 tower by about five miles, somewhere south of Grand Meadow, MN. Basically straight south of Rochester 30 miles and straight east of Austin 15 miles and not to far from the Iowa border. KIMT 3/KYIN 24 is southwest from 6/15/47 and 10. The location allows the stations to serve Mason City, Austin and Rochester with a good signal grade. Most channels aren't usable past Cannon Falls (Judging by antennas visible from Hwy 52, after about Zumbrota, you don't see rotor'd installs much north of Zumbrota).

The LaCrosse/Eau Clare market is somewhat strange. It's one market, split between two cities about 80 miles apart. They share one CBS station (WKBT 8) and one NBC (WEAU 13), then have sister PBS, FOX and ABC stations. In LaCrosse, PBS, FOX and ABC come off a tower located less than five miles from the city. WKBT, in order to reach better to Eau Clare, is located in Holmen, WI, which is straight east of Winona, MN.

Interesting to see other DX'ers here. I DX from near Duluth. Currently I am without a UHF antenna, but I've been using my (rotated) FM yagi on my roof to DX TV.

Just did a scan and here are the results:

3.1 Local CBS
3.2 Local CW
4.1 WCCO - Consistent decode. This one seems around almost every night!
5.1 KSTP - Very inconsistent decode.
5.2 KSTC - Good.
5.3 Me TV - Good.
5.4 Antenna TV - Good.
5.6 This TV - Good
5.7 Live Well Network - Somewhat blocky but better than 5.1.
6.1 Local NBC
6.2 Local MyNetwork TV
(8 Local PBS off the air)
9.2 KMSP SD - consistent
10.1 Local ABC
10.2 Local ?? (don't know what it is now)
21.1 Local FOX
27.1 Local religious
29.1 WFTC HD - consistent

Sub-decode carriers apparent on 7, 9, 11, 12, 22, 23, 28, 34, 40, and 42.
Edited by kc0ltv - 7/23/12 at 1:16am

You know, I just put two and two together and realized you post every once and a while at SatelliteGuys, don't you? I just got in the FTA hobby myself a couple months ago with a Ku dish and have been lurking around on the relevant forums there.


That's pretty impressive you can get WCCO, KSTP, KSTC, and WFTC well enough to decode using an FM antenna. Each of those stations operates on UHF several hundred MHz in frequency higher than the FM band. Probably most impressive is WFTC since that station has a directional pattern that favors sites to the south of the transmitter.

every once in a while

last night was another good night at DX'ing

with antenna aimed normally I grabbed NBC WEAU 13 from Eau Claire. It was funny to see a 13-0 (Univision Mpls) and then 13-1 & 13-2.
went up on the roof and aimed the antenna straight east. 13 came in real strong and then picked up ABC WQOW 18-1,18-2,18-3..real good signal. Also grabbed CBS 8-1 & 8-2 from LaCrosse
moved it more SE then the fun began. Kept 8,13 and 18 and added WXOW 19, 2 WPT affiliates (28 from Eau Claire and 31 from LaCrosse). Also grabbed FOX WLAX 25 but because I already had a 25-1 in the list (from the TBN mux in Mpls) it left it on 17-3 & 17-4

moved antenna back to how it should be (NE towards Mpls) and got Fox WEUX 48-1 & 48-2 from Eau Claire. Ironically no Duluth stations showed up last night.

So at one point I ended up being able to see
Mpls stations (2,4,5,9,11,13,16,23,25,29,33,43,45)
LaCrosse (8,19,25,31)
Eau Claire (13,18,28,48)

not too shabby

I've also been able to get clear decodes of some of those channels (back on their pre-transition channel assignments) on an old Dish Network MPEG-2 HD receiver back in 2004 on the first floor of my house with just rabbit ears.

As for the FM antenna, I've found that it works best on TV when it is pointed roughly 90 degrees west of the transmitters. I would say that it works a bit better than rabbit ears indoors, but not much better. Still, it does allow for some amazing DX once in a rare while. On August 24, 2011, I was able to log stations as far away as KGCW-DT RF 41 in Burlington, IA (consistent reception at 396 miles), as well as much of the rest of the Quad Cities market stations, as well as closer-in stations from La Crosse, Dubuque, Green Bay, Central Wisconsin, etc. It was also ironically with the FM antenna (and not the UHF antenna I had up between 2005 and 2008) that I logged my furthest definite analog UHF TV station - KWBM-31 Harrison, AR (696 miles), although I'm sure if I had my UHF antenna still up I would have done better. I'm in a location that is better than most for TV DX - only 6 local stations within about 100 miles and on a hill with a clear view to the S out to about 6 miles, so back in the olden days KMSP-9 and KARE-11 would "trop in" from 124 miles away using just a coat hanger for an antenna. And I'll never forget the tropo openings where just using rabbit ears (and an excellent set - a 1984-vintage Zenith Space Command) there was something on nearly every channel - weak translators from the southern and western MN UHF cable systems, the entire state of Iowa, Omaha, Chicago, etc.

As for this morning, KIMT 3.3 also managed to scan in, though I did not receive any decoded video frames on the Zenith STB.

I know this pertains to Mankato but since there is no topic I guess I'll post it here

KEYC-DT2 (Fox Mankato) is starting to do HD outside of prime time. Noticed 2 1/2 men (at 9:30PM) and the Doctors (2PM) are now in HD. All other syndicated programming is still black barred (as is everything outside of network programming on KEYC CBS)
KEYC-DT2 is 480i widescreen

Nice! funny how they are able to do local HD even before our local ABC affiliate It's really sad that Kimmel and even KSTPs news is SD.....maybe one day?

I dont understand how they're doing "HD" (hell its just 480i widescreen) sometimes and on KEYC CBS12 there is NO HD outside of network programming

now checking randomly the last few days (on the old antenna)
2:00 Doctors YES
3:00 Dr Oz NO
4:00 Judge Judy NO (I dont think this is even in HD...its not on Fox 9 either)
5:00 Extra NO
5:30 New Adventures....Christine NO
6:00 Andy Griffith....what do you think?
7:00-9:00 Primetime YES
9:00 News NO
9:30 2 1/2 men YES
10:00 Raymond YES
10:30 TMZ NO
11:00 Excused YES
12:00 Family Guy NO
then they sign off for the night

For those with Tivo's - not a big issue, but on your guide are the listings for 9-2 and 29-2 switched? With each showing the listings for the other?

Same thing here. Thanks for spotting this. I filled out the lineup change form here, and if you haven't done so already it probably wouldn't hurt if you filled it out as well to help prompt them to fix it. There must be some problems going on at Tribune's listings department. First they add that Alaska subchannel to our listings, and now they randomy swap the listings for two of our subchannels.

Anyone know if we're going to be getting MundoFox when it launches on Monday? Just wondering if confusion over that is behind Tribune/Zap2it messing up the program data for 9-2 and 29-2...

I havent heard anything about it being added here
nope. If you look at zap2it it also shows 3.3 from Juneau, AK too

I think Fox wants to keep the cross promote thing (with 9-2 working off RF29) as folks have issues with 9 being on VHF

Interesting there are 2 markets in the top 20 with no spot for it yet
us and San Francisco

Anyone know why all TPT channels appear to be down as of about 11AM today? I've tried 3 different TVs and none can get a lock on any of them. Seems odd to schedule station or tower maintenance during pledge time...

They are up on cable but down OTA both RF Channels.

out here on OTA but fine on satellite

So the fact that cable and satellite are getting a signal means this OTA outage is probably due to tower work in Shoreview, right?

Just checked and it looks like TPT is back on air as of 12:50PM

came back up about 12:30

Here's the lowdown on what happened to TPT last Saturday. Tower maintenance strikes again.

Looks like starting in January we'll be able to watch Jimmy Kimmel Live in HD even though KSTP still has no capability to air prerecorded HD content. According to this, Kimmel and Nightline will be switching timeslots on January 8th. Assuming KSTP will carry Kimmel live from the network feed after the local news like they currently do with Nightline, it should air in HD here.