Thread: ota antenna help

Are you looking for a answer or a solution to your question.

Without going in the history of television or explaining how the signal is transmitted - this is what i will tell you.

WWCP / WATM is transmitted from the same tower and the same transmitter.

The way it works is that Johnstown / Altoona is not a very big market. So to compensate for that, they have two stations. Most times the FCC only allows you to own one station per a market, but no one else was interested in running a ABC station in that market - so they basically have two stations.

Because of how the digital works, you have one high def station and up to two sub stations. So WWCP transmits it's signal on channel 8 and carries WATM as a sub channel - and is pointed towards Johnstown / Pittsburgh.

WATM carries it's high def signal on Ch 23 and carries WWCP on it's sub channel and is pointed towards the Altoona market.

WTAJ - is out of Altoona, it's call letters stands for Tyrone, Altoona, Johnstown.
WTAJ's market is basically Johnstown, Altoona, Tyrone, Dubois, State College.

WJAC - their call letters stands for Johnstown Automobile Company services all of central Pennsylvania.

Those are some of the basic channels available in State College - along with a new station that is out of State College that carries the CW Network. The reason why the station is out of State College is because the next closest station that has the CW is in Jennette PA. That station was in Johnstown on UHF and was moved closer to Pittsburgh to get a larger market share.

One of the rules - when you move a station is that it still has to be receiveable in the city where it origionated.

So to compensate for the loss - due to the fact that UHF does not work well in mountainous terrain and the fact that with a power reduction on the VHF, the only logical choice would be to put up translators.

WWCP / WATM has several, the whole way down to Bedford Pa and Summerset PA.

Unfortunately WTAJ is only a 1000 Kw station and does not cover the area well.
Their budget is low and they said that they did not care if they lost a portion of their viewing area due to terrain.

WJAC has several translators - including on being built in Dubois PA and also one in Kane PA and one in State College.

WPSU - Penn State University is out of Clearfield with a repeater in State College. They were the people who developed the technology to transmit the same signal on the same frequency from two different transmitters at the same time and not have clocking issues. Basically there is a large mountain between State College and Clearfield and the signal does not travel well in either direction.

To watch all these stations, a UHF high gain antenna is manditory.

I would suggest that you invest in a Terrestrial Digital XG 91 - antenna and maybe even a CM 7777 pre amp and good RG 6 wire and bypass the current system your camper currently has. You will need some type of mast pipe which you could set up - once you get to your campsite and the size of the XG 91 is small enough that you can just put it inside of the camper when you are traveling.

Unfortunately the terrain in and around that area is challenging and your reception OTA will not improve with any camper type antenna. The only other option is to stay at a campground that offers basic cable as part of their package.

TV fool dot com

Look at the TV Fool Report for State College.

The first problem is that you need a exact address, because there is fluctuations in elevation from one side of State College to the other and the Western Side has a large mountain to the west that blocks most signals from that direction.

W42DG - Ch 42
W36BE - Ch 36
DW39BE - Ch 39
WATM - Ch 34
WTAJ - Ch 32
WHVL - Ch 27
WKBS - Ch 46
W59AI - Ch 17
WJAC - Ch 22
WPSU - Ch 15
WJAC - Ch 34
WPIX - CH 25
All translators are low power and do not transmit very far.

All full power stations are at a distance of about 34 - 39 miles and requires more then just a set of rabbit ears type antenna's to receive.

None of the stations in the viewing area are VHF

Older RV / Camper type antenna's were high on gain for VHF with little to no reception capibilities for UHF.

If I can't receive it at my house with a antenna 18 feet off the ground, with a semi clear view of Johnstown / Altoona and a Winegard 8200U antenna, then you are not going to receive it with a Silversensor or Wingman type antenna.