Fort Smith, AR - HDTV - Page 106

Funny, I wasn't thinking of A/C as in air conditioning. I meant it as a power connection or alternating current. Guess I should pay more attention to the abbreviations I use.

I thought "A/C" on your diagram was obvious that it was the 110v for the power brick.

I got the pre-amp installed and everything is working well. Below are my results.


Living Room
Stat----Old-----New
KFSM----30------30
KAFT----29------30
KFTA----17------20
KHOG----30------30
KPBI----23------25
KNWA----26------26

Bed Room
Stat----Old-------New
KFSM----28.7------29.1
KAFT----29.3------29.2
KFTA----18.0------20.0
KHOG----28.0------27.7
KPBI----23.6------24.5
KNWA----21.6------25.5


Install Pics:
Attachment 199639
Attachment 199640
Attachment 199641

Thanks for all your help!

You're welcome. I was expecting better numbers until I saw the images of the antenna installed in the midst of all that ductwork. But as long as your SNR is high enough and steady enough to keep a solid lock, that's all that matters. It's really a wonder it's working at all, with the antenna in such close proximity to metal/foil/mylar ductwork materials. The multipath signals up there are likely horrible.

When the weather/seasons change or at certain times of the day, if you start noticing A/V dropouts, you may have to get the antenna out of the attic and away from that ductwork.

Would you mind posting your tvfool results again? I cannot find it. Use the "Mapping Tool" and drag the red map marker over your house, before clicking "Make Radar Plot"
Then, post a link to the Radar Plot page. Your location will not appear on the radar plot page. Thanks

Yeah, I was shocked that it was able to work around the duct work also. As I mentioned in a previous post, it actually seems like it's helping. If I move it where it isn't actually touching the sides of the antenna, the signal strength is worse. If weather does end up giving me issues, I'll move it up to the roof.

When you mention multipath signals being horrible, what are you referring to? IS there some way I can check this. I'm just curious.

Here's my tvfool results again.
Attachment 199660

Multipath signals are signals reaching the antenna indirectly, from bouncing off other objects like hills, buildings, trees, airplanes, vehicles or anything metallic. The signals arrive at the antenna at slightly different times, which can confuse the tuner and make it hard to keep a lock on the signal. In the analog days, multipath displayed on the screen as "ghosts" or outlines of the original image shifted slightly to the side. With digital, multipath can cause lower signal and when bad enough, may cause A/V dropouts. Some tuners' multipath-rejection capability are much better than others.

Re your TVFool, I found the original one you posted in the other thread. This one appears to be identical. Was it based purely on address entry or were the results pinpointed over your house, using the mapping tool?

That may explain the weirdness I saw from knwa. Is coming in fine now at about 26 db but it would occasionally just completely fall out.

The tvfool location was based on my address but the location where it dropped the pin is right about where I put it in the attic.

Multipath is definitely likely with KNWA or KPBI, since your antenna is aimed way off-axis from those transmitters located at Garfield. But with all that ductwork & foil insulation, you're probably getting multipath on more channels.

My TV needs a SNR of around ~15dB or more to keep a lock on a channel. If it dips below that, I get pixelization, and audio dropouts. Every tuner is different, but you should be able figure out about how much signal your tuner cards need, by looking at the SNR whenever you experience dropouts, freezing or pixelization.

With analog, it was easy to see if you had multipath problems. There would be ghosting on the screen that worsened in proportion to how bad the multipath was. With digital, you need a spectrum analyzer. A clean signal would look like this, and has been compared to the "hair on Bart Simpson's head"... A multipath signal would have high peaks & valleys instead of a consistent "Bart" pattern.

That makes since considering how both KNWA and KPBI both flaked out a couple of times even though when it did come it the signals were strong. Everything is working fine now. As for my tuners, they both can pull in a solid signal at 16 - 17 db.

If my problems return with KNWA or KPBI could I just use my old RCA ANT806, which is currently still on the roof, and mount it to the post in the attic pointing NE? If so, do I just use a splitter in reverse order just before the pre-amp connection?

It's usually not that easy, although joining two antennas together in that manner will occasionally work and is worth a try. But it's a crap shoot and it may do nothing but degrade your overall reception.

Probably the best thing you could do is get the 4228 out of the attic.

We have a problem affecting some viewers who receive our KHOG ABC signal off air causing them to not be able to pick up the station or sometimes they have video and no audio. The problem seems to only affect viewers using converter boxes but one viewer with a DT television has reported no audio. Doing a channel scan has fixed some, done nothing for others, and fixed some for a few minutes only to go away again. 29.2 the Arkansas CW doesn't seem to be affected even though both are the same signal, It almost has to be a PSIP problem. No problems have been reported with channel 40 in the river valley. We are desperately trying to find and correct the cause of this problem.

On my Sony HDTV, I have recently had black screen and no audio on 29-1. Also black screen on a K-world USB tuner.

29-2 was fine. Smells like bad PSIP.

We think so to. We are doing a line by line comparison between 29 and 40, but so far we haven't found anything different that wasn't supposed to be.
DTV Innovations which make the PSIP inserter are connected in remotely and looking too.
Very perplexing.

I saw this happen on a couple of stations when I lived in LR, back in the early days of DTV. The problem would present as no audio, no video or both. And only certain tuners, that could not deal with the non-standard PSIP or data errors.

I currently have a similar problem on Eureka Springs station, KPBI, ch 34. 34-1 (RTV) is fine, but 34-2 (Univision) has no audio. This glitch on 34-2 only affects one of my tuners, a Kworld set top box. All other tuners in the house ignore the problem. I never watch 34-2, so it is not an issue. Luckily with KHOG's problem, I can just flip over to KSPR, Springfield ABC affiliate. Other viewers farther south may not have that option...

We think we have it fixed now. You may have to do a channel scan. We forced the system to rebuild the PSIP tables.

Thanks. If I see it resurface, I'll post here.

@40/29- I'm getting some weird audio tonight. OTA and on Dish Network(40.1 and 040-00 HD for dish). it sounds like they are underwater, kind of a reverb effect.

6:30 pm-How i met your mother is the show that is on.

Don't know if it's the same episode that sethwell watched or not, but garbled audio OTA here for both 40.1 and 29.1 and on DirecTV channel 40 for the midnight showing of How I met Your Mother. Some of the commercials sounded OK though.

Could someone tell me if this channel is gone? I previously received it on 34-1 but it has been missing for about a week.

Thanks.

I'm still getting KPBI 34-1 and KXUN 34-2 over the air. Try rescanning your TV tuner for digital channels.

I tried the rescan and 34 went away, but I'm now seeing RTV on 31-2 (Univision on 31-1). Very odd.

What city are you in?

Centerton.

I also noticed at the same time channel 34 went away, I started getting a good signal on 24-1 which would never come in before.

There's definitely something wrong with KPBI 34. It's a pixelated mess this morning, and signal strength is way down (usually @ 100% for me).

Is anyone seeing KFSM's channel 24 translator in Fort Smith?

- Trip

Loud and clear down here in Greenwood, about 14 miles SE of the tower. Signal level is almost as good as their channel 18 signal.

I am on the OK border in Fort Smith. We haven't been able to get 24.1/24.2 since Fall 2009 (right around the time of the World Series). IIRC, there was a storm that affected the tower and our signal was never the same after that. While the signal strength remained high, the signal quality bounced all over the place.

In the last couple of weeks it seems that these channels are back on for me. Signal quality is stable. I am guessing that something was changed after one of the semi-recent storms.


Has anybody had problems with 40.2 in Fort Smith? I don't watch anything on that channel but my wife has reported issues with the recordings of America's Next Top Model. Every time she complains, I check the signal and it is solid. Seems like our signal gets bad right when that show comes on but is fine the rest of the time.

I know this is so so lazy of me....but... before I turn my antenna toward FS, what are the chances of me picking up the new FS transmitter signal?

If you're talking about the new KFSM signal, probably not very good. Their maximum ERP is only 15 kW. But you'll never know unless you try it.

Here's a coverage map.
http://maps.google.com/?q=http://www...REN%26state=AR