TV DX-ing: Watching TV near you
 

Wow! The atmosphere was really pulling in TV last night... so much that it was killing all of our local channels! Currently, I am up at my cabin in the woods... roughly 45 miles north of where i live. On average, I only get the Beaumont NBC-4 and CBS-6. ABC-12 never comes in unless I go out and turn the antenna... and even then it's not that great. Got a pretty decent size antenna at least 20 feet in the air. Because of having so many tall pines around here, I need at least that or more. The set is a 10 year old Maggie 25".

Well, last night, every channel had something on it. Channels 2, 11, 8, 13, 20, 26, 39, and 55 from Houston were coming in like they were next door. Channel 6 KRIS from Corpus Christi (300 miles away) was bleeding into our 6 making it unwatchable. Channel 3 KIII from Corpus coming in a little snowy, but not bad. On Channel 10, I was getting video from KLFY Lafayette, LA and audio from KZTV Corpus Christi. That was weird. There were other channels I was never able to identify. Pulled in a channel 5 pretty good... only 5 I know of offhand comes from Dallas/Ft Worth.

Not sure what was going on in the cosmos last night, but, it doesn't seem to be happening tonight. Back to our 4 and 6, but pullin in Houston 2 a little.

Had a really good night like this a couple years back watchin on my '59 Motorola and '63 CM. In fact, if I remember right, that lasted for several nights back then.

Anyone else get any dx-ing last night? Or am i the only one using an antenna?

Damn !! I don't have any way to test it-we got cable here 1964-65, and all the TV antennas are long since gone. -Sandy G.

Been that way a couple of nights. Warm days, quick cool down at night, instant coastal ducting. FM stations from Houston and So La. coming in down here as well. Happens here on the coast in the spring and fall. TV stations from Mexico come in strong down here. But still no 6 meter openings. KBMT has a null in their pattern toward the north to protect Ch 12 in Shreveport. They are short-spaced. Tower is located near Vidor.

Yeah, the weather has been somewhat squirrelly and out of season lately... got up to 81 here in the woods the other day, then cool down nicely in the evening. Beaumont nearly broke a recored high from 1911 that same day. Today, it seems the temps are getting back to normal for February.

I had figured those couple of warm days might have been the reason for the skip.

I recall picking up Mexico on channel 7 the last time this happened. I knew it wasn't KPLC in Lake Charles because the news people weren't talking with a coon-ass (cajun) accent. Instead, it was more like Telemundo! Then, there was a station identification that started with something like an X instead of a K or W, so, I figured it was Mexico. I think that's the farthest I've ever picked up.

call that "tropospheric ducting" and like you said, basically and temperature inversion from cool to warm. Just after a servere thunderstorm or after/durring a tornado warning (when the sky is green) I can DX stations from michican like they are out of chicago. I remember pulling in benton harbor, MI crystal clear last year. Must have been 10PM and milwaukee channel 4 was near perfect too. I also had a local station that broadcast near university of Illinois channel 12 or 8 really clear too. Quad cities came in pretty nice. I can pick up the quad cities very snowy on channel 6 under normal conditions at night. Its fun expecially with a rotor.

Heres a link to a troposheric ducting forcast:

http://home.cogeco.ca/~dxinfo/tropo.html

H.A.A.R.P.

Anthony

OK, That's it . No more Art Bell for yoouse guys. :D

Jim

Next you're going to tell us that the Atomic Mole people from the Planet Stinky Pinky don't exist? Flash Bazbo, save us!

Anthony

i remember 2 here in dayton oh being wiped out by 2 in miami fl.
it windshield wipered about 5 min and took over about 2 min.
takes a helluva signal to stomp a station that close.
this was in the 70's so i hadnt gotten my ticket yet.
just think what 6m woulda been capable of that morning.

Well, when I TV DX, what little time I have to do it with, I use a circa 1966 Sony B&W portable TV, I did get a channel 24 in Indiana once, I have a friend who grew up in Muncie and told me it was the local station he used to watch as a kid. I also have a 1998 Zenith 19" color hooked up to a set of 1959 "Rembrandt" rabbit ears my parents got when they were married that year. ;) I usually get the Cleveland TV station on the VHF bands and can get Akron on UHF along with Morgantown, WV if things are going my way. The Sony has similar performance too.

I once went to Wooster, Ohio to see a friend, on the way back, I had me scanner and picked up my local cops on 460.050 Mc as far away as Canton/Akron and I joked, "I hope we don't hear the cops called to an emergency next door," five minutes later, it happened. I have to watch my mouth at times, sometimes I say thing, then they happen. ;)

One more thing, my buddy and I took those same rabbit ears on my 19" Zenith and hooked them up to our 1982 Zenith, the main TV we have. At the time, WTAE, the ABC affiliate here in Pittsburgh on channel 4 closed down every night at 1 or 1:30 AM so we did managed to get the ABC affiliate on channel 4 out of Washington, DC.

I just read an article in a 1958 Radio-Electronics about someone on the East coast of the US receiving TV broadcasts from London, England. He talks about having to modify the set for the 10 kHz horizontal frequency that was used at the time, building a converter for the channel that was at 45MHz and using an old FM radio to receive the audio. The screen shots are pretty amazing for a signal that's traveled 4000 miles. It's too bad they switched to UHF. Apparently 45MHz is about as high as you can go for this kind of DXing.

Well I'm relatively new here and I've been reading old threads.I haven't tv DXed for years since I lived with my grandmother and her old 40 foot tower antenna got hit by lightning for the 3rd time and also had the antenna broken a couple of times by wind and the insurance company refused to cover it anymore.I think I wore out a few antenna rotors back then.My grandmother used to say you're gonna twist the knobs off my tv.She had one of the Sylvania GTMatics from the 70's.Anyway I accidentally did some DXing tonight on my little 1982 GE 10AB chassis tv I have near my computer.I live way on the eastern shore of Maryland and all I normally get with the rabbit ears on the set is 3 UHF channels(WBOC channel 16,WMDT47 and the local PBS channel on 28,don't remember the call letters)Anyway channel 16 got really snowy for some reason and I started to play with the rabbit ears and turn the selector back and forth.There was another PBS affiliate coming in pretty strong on channel 15 then I decided to see what I could get.Got another PBS affiliate on 22.A UPN station on 27,a Home shopping channel on 30,An WB station on 33 from Hampton Roads,VA,A Fox station from Richmond ,VA on 35,I think a PBS station on 36,Fox 43 from Virginia again(very clear)Pax on 50 (again very clear),channel 54 from Baltimore(on the weak side but pulling in)On to VHF with another pair of rabbit ears 2-6 nothing but the on 7 I was picking up an NBC affiliate,IO could turn the rabbit ears and also pick up another 7 an ABC station.I think that one comes from Washington ,DC.,Fox 9 from Philadelphia,WAVY 10(NBC)from Virginia,WBAL channel 11 from Baltimore and WJZ 13 plus another NBC affiliate 13 coming in with different orientation of the rabbit ears.After some playing around I was able to very faintly see a sight for sore eyes WMAR 2 from Baltimore.It used to be on cable around here but I guess WMDT47 won the fight to be the only ABC station on the cable around here.On the local cable(I can't get it,too far out) they even block out Judge Joe Brown and Judge Judy on Fox 5 and 9 so you have to watch them on WMDT (channel 7 on the cable)even though they come on at different times.And very faintly pulled in Fox 5 from Washington DC.I pulled on all those stations with just ordinary run of the mill rabbit ears.It's been hotter than normal and humid(thanks to Ophelia) and getting foggy at night.This morning it was very foggy.Most of the stations I picked up were over 100 miles away.

Whenever I see horizontal interference bars on my local Channel 3 I know it's DX'ing time for channels 2 thru 6 and sometimes FM. I live in New England, and have an outdoor antenna, and Channel 4 WJAX in Jacksonville FL and KARK in Little Rock AR are rather repeats for me every spring, especially when warm fronts moved around south of us. FM is a blast, occasionally getting as far as St. Louis, over 1,000 miles.
Tom

I had been wondering how the dx was farther east from here. Will a good outdoor antenna pull in Baltimore/Washington down your way, JC? I would love to have a nice setup with a rotor but other priorities right now. I had lots of fun as a kid, getting up early on Saturday morning & seeing what I could pull in as the stations came on the air. Well, I couldn't get myself up that early anymore anyhow!

It never was really reliable.Some nights you could get pretty clear pictures and some nights it would be rotten.That with my Grandmothers or uncles antenna.They both had the 40 ft or so tower with a big Wineguard antenna on top with a Wineguard booster with rotors.Sadly both towers after 30 years have broken off and the remains carried to the dump.My grandmother's house belongs to someone else and she is gone also. :( My uncle is getting ready to take down his old big C band satellite(used to be mine) and carry it to the woods.He's got cable now.Pulling in all the wild feeds on that used to be fun too.Everything's going digital and subscription and hardly any freebies left on that either.And the 18 year old reciever was giving up the ghost.Had to hit it on top sometimes( I had reworked the IF board on that POS Uniden a couple of times,notorious for cap failures and bad connections),had sparkles on high channnels and the remote was falling apart.My mom had an older about 25 foot tower with guy wires that did about as good as my grandmother's did until the good antenna broke and they put a supposed to be "deep fringe" Radio Shack antenna up there.I wasn't living there so I don't know how it did with DXing but it hated 47.Couldn't get it good for some reason.Then within a year cable came through.That was still standing as only a pole for his Utility light til this summer when they took it down.It's probably been hauled to the dump by now.It was pretty rusty.I have a tall outdoor pole with a useless rusted antenna and disentegrated wires that would be fun to DX with but I don't like heights and I ain't willing to spend the $$$ to replace the antenna,rotor and wires.Don't have the time to DX anyway.I stayed up a little too late the other nite...lol.Dragged thru the day.I think you could do better since you're a little further west.I have been in a couple of houses in Cambridge that could pick up Baltimore stations pretty good with an outdoor antenna and this was in the daytime which is usually worse than nights.

Yeah, up this way a decent antenna setup will pull from across the bay pretty good. But I have never been in a house east or south of here that had such an antenna. The last place I stayed had a real good amplified antenna & rotor but the pole it was on was probably 50' from the house. That long lead didn't help. Still, you could manage everything out of DC/Baltimore & on a good night you might get passable results out of Philly. Can you pull Norfolk from the flea market down at Temperanceville?

I had a big dish given to me a long time ago but never brought it home. The motor that moved it was shot. One day, where it sat at friend's house, I was able to bring in several channels of hockey from Canada, just by playing around aiming it. I thought this was great but they were unimpressed. Would have helped quite a bit if they would have just cemented the post it was on into the ground! As it was it would lean & get blown sideways in the wind. I remember a couple friends of ours when I was growing up got these dishes. The one guy, I don't think he ever made it through a thunderstorm without it blowing out.

Yeah.We could pull Norfolk and some other Virginia stations in.Forget about WBOC16 and WMDT47 down there though.Seems like where I'm at is the worst spot to get anything other than local UHF though in Newark.Md between Snow Hill and Berlin it takes an outdoor antenna just to get WBOC16 decent.Not very far away but theres a lot of woods between here and there.I can manage that with an indoor antenna here.Even WMDT47 can be brought in with an indoor but not as clear as 16.

One time I received a Channel 24 (PBS) from Muncie?, Indiana on my 1966 Sony B&W portable TV using my bow-tie UHF antenna. I'm here in the Pittsburgh, PA area.

Stories of fantastic TV, FM and 6m DX from Ohio
 

Before I had cable I used to get some incredible TV DX, both with the TV antenna in the attic of my home at the time and on rabbit ears. I live some 35 miles from Cleveland. Most of the time we get Detroit and Toledo stations when the TV bands open up in the summer, but I remember several summers in the '70s when I'd see channel 2 (WPBT, PBS) in Miami just as clear as a bell, and one year (late seventies, IIRC) when I was getting the station every day, great picture, for about five days. Another summer I had the surprise of my life when I got channel 2 from, of all places, Cheyenne, Wyoming, and also channel 2 from Tulsa, Oklahoma. (Seems like most of my DX was coming in on channel 2, and the TV antenna was pointed southwest at the Cleveland TV stations, so it makes sense I'd be getting TV DX from the Southwestern United States when the bands opened.) One year I also saw channel 4 from Port Arthur, Texas, and for several years when the local TV stations would sign off at night, I'd see channel 5 (WNEM-TV) in Saginaw, Michigan early in the morning, before our local ABC affiliate signed on. As far as FM DX goes, I mostly hear (both where I used to live and where I live now) just Detroit, Toledo, and several southwestern Ontario stations when the bands open up, but the best FM DX I've ever had with an indoor antenna was about 35 years ago. It was in the summer, in the middle of a bad thunderstorm. One of the local FM stations was knocked off the air. In its place, I heard, to my surprise, a station in West Palm Beach, Florida, booming in just as loud and clear (and in stereo yet, IIRC) as if it were one of the local stations in Cleveland. I was using a 17-transistor AM/FM/FM-stereo portable with a whip antenna at the time. There was also one summer in the mid-seventies when the six-meter ham band opened up wider than the Grand Canyon (temperature inversion, no doubt), and I contacted a station in South Dakota. I was using a Heathkit 6-meter transceiver with a superregenerative receiver, a 5-watt transmitter and a 20-foot-high (more or less) home-brewed antenna with round elements at that time. That was a summer I knew I'd never forget, along with the DX I mentioned earlier.

BTW, sometimes when the conditions are right I can get, on the cable, channel 49 from Michigan (UPN or WB, I think) behind a PBS channel about 50 miles from here. The Michigan station all but pushes the local channel off the screen when the conditions are just right; the rest of the time I have windshield-wiper, Venetian-blind effects, etc. that make it very difficult or downright impossible to watch the PBS station. About three years or so ago, again in the summer, I also had a mishmash on one of the cable channels, channel 4 (one of the local UHF stations is downconverted to that channel). I don't recall what station or stations was/were wiping out the local channel on our cable, but it was fun to watch while it lasted.

FYI - Thanks to the variations in analog reception at remote cable headends, many of them are now installing digital receivers and taking the converted-to-NTSC output to put on the cable system. No more "venetian blinds" - but of course , they don't see the skip in the summer and fall that's so interesting either.

I also remember one night, my friend and I hooked the rabbit ears to my 1982 Zenith and when Channel 4 used to sign off at night, we picked up a channel 4 out of Washington DC.

I was flipping channels on the 1960 Zenith (there's nothing good on here on vhf at 3AM, I was just checking the remote), and I pulled in something on ch6. I am not aware of a ch6 around here, never got anything on it before, it only lasted for a few minutes, and there was a lot of FM interference, I really couldn't make out much, the audio that I think went with the tv station was in Spanish. It was a brief moment of excitement in an otherwise dull night.
I used to do TV dx-ing all the time. I had a 17" Zenith not too unlike this one and one of those made for FM radio only antennas ontop of a 2 story house I used for vhf, as well as a vhf/uhf television antenna ontop of one of the sheds. That FM only antenna actually worked surprisingly well on all the vhf channels. I really miss the TV dx-ing but being on the first floor of a 2 level apartment building there's not much I can do.
This is the only thing that really upsets me about the tv stations changing to digital. There's not much I like to watch on the tv anyway, most of the time I just watch DVDs or tapes. But if I'm receiving something from really far away I like watching it even if I don't like whatever program it is, and by the time I finally might be able to get a place I can put a big antenna on top of, they'll be nothing to receive with it. I know you are supposed to be able to get those converters, but I wouldn't think you would be able to DX with it, I wouldn't think it would work with a really weak signal. Maybe I'm wrong, I don't really know anything about this modern stuff. Has anybody tried it?
Oh well, if I can't do TV maybe I should get into the AM dx-ing, if I strung a copper wire from one end of the apartment to the other I might do pretty well, I got a 1948 Stromberg-Carlson console radio that one night pulled in an Albequerque station with just the built in antenna.

There are some people DXing the digital channels. Most of them seem to be using computers with DTV tuner cards. Check out this link.

http://pages.cthome.net/fmdx/hdtv.html

I was driving from Detroit to DC on Sunday June 18, scanning the FM dial between Youngstown, OH and Pgh, about 12:30-ish. My FM radio received A TON of FMs from Florida for about 50 minutes. WQOL from Vero Beach; WRMF from West Palm, Gator Country 101.9 from Naples; A few from Orlando, one from Jacksonville. I bet TV was skipping big-time then as well--at least channel 6...!

PS. Unfortunate I didn't read CaptainMoody's free TVs thread before I left for Detroit. I was staying in Rochester Hills--just 20 minutes or so from Roseville...

Channel 6 is in San Diego... Used to be an independent (XETV), but now I think is a network-owned station. I'm surprised you got that!!!! I was able to get it clearly on some days when I lived on the South side of the Hollywood Hills on Westwood Bl, and I could get it from Chatsworth sometimes since that's at a elevation high enough to clear the Hollywood Hills and catch San Diego across Santa Monica Bay. But where you are, pressed right underneath the hills blocking your line of sight, that's pretty good! I wonder if you got a bounce off the Verdugo mountains?

Charles

Have a look at
http://pages.cthome.net/fmdx/hdtv.html

Be sure to continue to his second page for complete dated logs of his analog and digital dx-ing

"Have a look at http://pages.cthome.net/fmdx/hdtv.htmlBe sure to continue to his second page for complete dated logs of his analog and digital dx-ing"

That was interesting reading. It's good to see that it will still be possible to pull in distant stations in the near future.

"But where you are, pressed right underneath the hills blocking your line of sight, that's pretty good! I wonder if you got a bounce off the Verdugo mountains?"

I don't know what was going on, whatever it was it only lasted for a few minutes. I have found that specifically these hand-wired-chassis Zenith b&w sets have amazing ability to pull in far off stations.

Digital TV DX in Australia is also alive & well so it seems.

On Wednesday morning (05/07/06) my boss went out to do an antenna job & he was getting ABN12 & ATN6 on a customers STB in the Sunshine Coast regon in an area that is served by ABQ12 & BTQ6 from Brisbane & he saw ABC Sydney in the channel info instead of the usual ABC Brisbane.

The signals were breaking up as to be expected for this mode of propergation as it was battling with the Brisbane ABC signal & it was edging it out for a time.

Unfortunatly we have no real proof of this & I was only told about after it had happened.

There was a massive high pressure system that covered most of eastern Australia at the time that might account for what had happened.