OTA Kicking some Major Arse

[bsr2002]

I live in Corpus Christi, TX and as I'm typing this I'm picking up Fox 8 | WVUE - New Orleans, Louisiana on DTV . That's pretty far even for my CM 4228. I know this is probably temporary, but how does this happen?

 

[MikeD-C05]

It is called tropo ducting or "skipping". It happens with both anlaog and digital signals. It happens alot on the coast in wet conditions. Do a search on google.com and it will give you a lot of information about it. I sometimes get the digital signal from Houston and I am at least 90 miles away and I am using a terk 44 which is only made for about 40 miles out. It happens at night and sometimes early in the morning . Never during the day for me.

 

[bsr2002]

Right, at night and early in the mornings I will receive Victoria, Houston, Austin or San Antonio which is cool because our ABC station dragging it's feet going DTV so I get to pick the HD ABC station with the best signal.

Yes, I will do a google search like you said. By the way I've been picking these LA. stations mostly all day with very little drop outs Will enjoy it while I can. It sure is interesting to watch someone elses local NEWS instead of your own

 

[arxaw]

Here are some maps showing the best days and locations of tropospheric ducting reception:
http://home.cogeco.ca/~dxinfo/tropo.html

 

[langlin]

I'm seventy miles from the Springfield, MO antenna farm and I get perfect reception from the two high power DT stations, the NBC and PBS. I am waiting for the other stations to get up to high power but I expect to get them too, I have a high gain antenna at about 40 feet high and I guess I have a path through the Ozarks also, but the signal has held through the summer and the signal comes through tall oak trees. I also have to "look" through trees for my 61.5 Voom and CBS.

 

[gbranch]

See

http://www.dxing.com/tvfmdx.htm

for a very good primer on tropo and sporadic-E skip.

 

[damaged]

Back in the hayday of CB radio, we would experience 'skip', in my youth, when I lived in Las Vegas and into CBs, I have gotten signals from as far as Canada and Mexico as well as from other far-away states (using a professional outdoor CB base station antenna), but only on certain days, interesting stuff.

 

[langlin]

Being 70 miles from tv station, skip ruined our spring and summer viewing many nights, but was really a VHF problem and low VHF at that, now that our digital stations are UHF it is totally not a problem.

 

[arxaw]

Being 70 miles from tv station, skip ruined our spring and summer viewing many nights, but was really a VHF problem and low VHF at that, now that our digital stations are UHF it is totally not a problem.

There are quite a few VHF digitals (four in Arkansas), and even a few lowband VHF digitals across the country. KETS-DT is on channel 5, which does not work well at all, due to impulse noise interference and tropo/eskip interference. They will be abandoning lowband VHF after the 2nd round of channel selections. Smart move.

 

[Tower Guy]

There are quite a few VHF digitals (four in Arkansas), and even a few lowband VHF digitals across the country. KETS-DT is on channel 5, which does not work well at all, due to impulse noise interference and tropo/eskip interference. They will be abandoning lowband VHF after the 2nd round of channel selections. Smart move.

True, except that so few stations have selected channel 5 that the tropo and E-skip problems will virtually disappear once the analogs are turned off.