One channel failed. Was CM antenna prob

Barry Erick

SatelliteGuys Pro
Original poster
Aug 27, 2004
1,020
0
Dallas
In our market, 2 HD stations are VHF and I maintain both transmitters. The others are UHF, as in most markets.

Well we have to overcome UHF only antenna's and questions such as "Why did you pick VHF when all analogs and other digitals are UHF" Of course, the FCC picked those for us.

Anyway, we are Ch 11 and CH 13. On Thanksgiving day I lost ch 13. I immediately logged into the transmitter equipment to make sure the PSIP infor was good and the transmitter was on and it was. Others had no problem, so it seemed to be my problem. I was getting rf channel 11 ok but not 13. And all U's came in.

My antenna is a Channel Master CM 3016. They use a zig-zag patern of a #14 wire to connect the VHF elements. THey from through self pinching open connections and these got corroded. Wiggling and pinching these got ch 13 back.

This has already helped one of our viewers who had a similar problem.

Our most repeated problem, however, is people seeing ch 13 ok but not ch 11. They have UHF only antennas and ch 13 is close enough to UHF that it gets picked up, while ch 11 is too far away.

Some say they just bought the antenna and this is what the sales person sold them. We tell them to take it back. UHF only is wrong for this market.