O-O

Piggie

I am pretty sure the whole rush to VHF has back fired on their rural viewers at least. I know a few people around the country that are not fringe, can't put up or won't put up an outdoor antenna and just stopped watching the VHFs because it drops out in the middle of a show.

I am sure there are plenty that don't have a VHF problem. Most of it is location, location, location.

My local NBCs in all three directions are VHF. I live inside the supposed FCC contour of WNBW REC Broadcast Query but they only run 470 watts ERP in my direction. I already filed a complaint with the FCC like that is going to do any good, but at least there is one on record.

Oh, I have a pair of YA-1713s with the top one at 30 ft, and the second one 40 inches under it. I exhaustively tried all kinds of distant between the two, and that works best across the VHF band.

Tried 40 inches and it came alive, then went back to one antenna and no doubt I have more gain than a single antenna at this point.

I can turn the beam to Jacksonville and it works fine in the daytime but not at night because of skip.

It totally inhales canal water. I am so sick of it I am ready to give up NBC and not even watch them on satellite. They intentionally left a huge part of their old coverage in the dark.

So I hope all the VHF's have to suck it up on MPH

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The more I understand, the less I know.

Aaron62

You know it's bad when Piggie can't pick up a channel. Especially with a pair of YA-1713s. Have you thought about trying duel 91XGs?

Piggie

Key word here is VHF. UHF DTV works pretty well and as expected. It's VHF to me that is a total disaster to receive in many situations where UHF would have worked.

91XG is a UHF antenna and would do me no good picking up VHF.

I have good reception pointing west at Gainesville FL on UHF using only a Radio Shack U-75R up 23 ft. About 18 ft is enough to give me LOS to Gainesville, but I like to suggest go 5 ft above LOS is possible.

So I have about the tiniest UHF pointing a Gainesville UHF at 25 to 37 miles to the stations and good results.

Then I have the biggest thing I could erect at 30 ft can't give me reliable VHF to Gainesville at 37 miles, nor to Jacksonville at 61 miles.

Now that said it's not the problem with those stations signal reaching me, it does. The problem is not enough of it can be received all the time to over come impulse noise in the day time, but most of the time daytime is not too bad.

But once night falls, there is so much tropo in Florida its a lost cause. Even last night ch 9 out of Gainesville that granted only runs 0.470 KW ERP was wiped out by some skip. Probably either Sarasota at 160 miles or Panama City at 230 miles. The way tropo normally runs in Florida it's more likely WINK in Sarasota at 444m smoking 69.1 KW

Moreover is the fact that VHF reception is so fragile. It works when there is no noise at all around in the environment. Even worse is it takes very very little interference on the same channel from out of town to wipe it out. Judging back when Tampa still had analogs running, the amount of tropo that wipes out VHF from out of town would not even let the most die hard viewer that watched analog deep in the snow able to follow a program.

The oligarchy's desire for a little money ($19 billion) and lobbyists adding not how much to the campaign coffers, took away channels 52-69. How I wish I had been more aware of this before the 700 MHz auctions occurred, as now they are gone forever and VHF doesn't work very well.

__________________
The more I understand, the less I know.