RabbitEars Search Map Enters Public Beta

Trip

RabbitEars Webmaster
Original poster
Staff member
HERE TO HELP YOU!
Jun 21, 2008
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Alexandria, VA, US
I'm pleased to announce the release of the RabbitEars Search Map as a public beta.

RabbitEars.Info

This tool is designed to replace TVFool which, although I love it, has gone very out of date to the point that it's not really useful anymore to people trying to help with antenna issues.

Please read more about it on the RabbitEars Blog.

RabbitEars Search Map Enters Public Beta - RabbitEars Blog

Feel free to provide comments, opinions, feedback, and bug reports.

- Trip
 
I've made a slight change to the calculation code. If a station is mechanically tilted and has a distorted pattern filed in LMS, and I happen to have the untilted pattern noted on RabbitEars, I'm now using the untilted antenna to calculate the signal strength rather than the tilted antenna. This change should make some of the Los Angeles area stations, as an example, more realistic. KPXN in particular gets a big boost out of it, more closely reflecting their actual signal level.

- Trip
 
According to Rabbitears, Wish-tv's move to 26 is pending. Wudz-Ld move to 6 is not listed. The two that moved to channel sharing, are not listed, Wndy-tv and WCLG-Tv.
 
According to Rabbitears, Wish-tv's move to 26 is pending.

Is it not? What am I missing here?

Wudz-Ld move to 6 is not listed.

Fixed; it'll be in the Search Map tomorrow morning. I had overlooked it and hadn't flagged that as a post-repack record. (When managing thousands of records by hand, some will inevitably slip through the cracks.)

The two that moved to channel sharing, are not listed, Wndy-tv and WCLG-Tv.

The channel sharing records have been giving me a lot of problems and most of them are missing from the post-repack listing. I'm considering a few solutions, including removing the channel sharing guest stations entirely, since it's not like they actually have their own signals anyway.

I wouldn't characterize it as "many flaws" personally.

- Trip
 
Don't get me wrong, I like the new public Beta. Wish may go to 26, but has not been granted that right. The two channel sharing still show as there original channel numbers in a scan. I have always tried to help update changes in the two different areas I receive in. When I pulled up my area and saw 3 channels missing and that had one not been granted, I saw several flaws.
 
Unless there's an obvious reason for it not to be granted, I generally mark a newly-filed application as "post-repack" since most grantable applications are granted, even if it takes a while to move through the process. So I've marked WISH's DRT that way, even though it remains ungranted, as you point out.

I'm going to work on something better for the channel sharing guest stations, but they're definitely an outstanding issue right now. The problem is that the FCC database only contains a current licensed record for each one. Only when the channel sharing host station files a new license to cover and it is granted by the FCC does the record attached to the channel sharing guest station change, and then to the new shared license. That means that any STAs or auxiliaries or even CPs for new facilities aren't easily linked to the channel sharing guest station. It's a tough problem to solve.

Please don't take my previous reactions the wrong way. I do like to be kept updated, but the entire text of your initial message was "Many flaws in Indianapolis repack post." It provided no context, no clues as to what you were seeing, and the word "many," in my mind at least, is generally more than four items. You can understand how I might not have taken it to be a positive message.

- Trip
 
The problem is that the FCC database only contains a current licensed record for each one. Only when the channel sharing host station files a new license to cover and it is granted by the FCC does the record attached to the channel sharing guest station change, and then to the new shared license.
That sounds like an awful lot of hand work. I figured buddying up was going to be database trouble whether because of the repack or because of lighthousing for Next Gen TV.
 
Alright, with a few exceptions where I'm still working out wrinkles in the data, the Canadian stations are now present in the Search Map, the TV Query, and are now coming from the LMS tables, not the CDBS tables, in the main listings.

As far as said wrinkles go, I am aware of the absence of CHWI-60 on its new channel and CJPC entirely, and the bad contours on CKWS and CBUT. All are on my to-do list today. If you spot anything else missing or in error for the Canadian data, let me know, but know that I've not touched every record yet.

- Trip
 
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Okay, a few things.

1) Canadian stations should be mostly sorted out at this point. CJPC is still missing, but CHWI-60 is now in place. Some of the rural translators still need to be touched and I need to clean up a few of the full-power stations in places.

2) I've attempted a fix for the channel sharing stations. The code is now much neater and the channel sharing stations should appear correctly. Aesthetically... I don't really like it, but I'm not sure what else I would do with it, exactly. Opinions GREATLY appreciated.

- Trip
 
Okay, a few things.

1) Canadian stations should be mostly sorted out at this point. CJPC is still missing, but CHWI-60 is now in place. Some of the rural translators still need to be touched and I need to clean up a few of the full-power stations in places.

2) I've attempted a fix for the channel sharing stations. The code is now much neater and the channel sharing stations should appear correctly. Aesthetically... I don't really like it, but I'm not sure what else I would do with it, exactly. Opinions GREATLY appreciated.

- Trip

This looks great! Here in Chicago, the post repack page now shows the channel sharing. One thing I see missing though is channel 48-1 disappeared on the post repack page. Not sure if that was due to your code change, or if it is going off air after the repack. But I see it is in phase 6 on the current station list then is gone on the post repack.
 
This looks great! Here in Chicago, the post repack page now shows the channel sharing. One thing I see missing though is channel 48-1 disappeared on the post repack page. Not sure if that was due to your code change, or if it is going off air after the repack. But I see it is in phase 6 on the current station list then is gone on the post repack.

Not related to the change; mistake in the database. Should be in tomorrow's studies.

- Trip
 
I'm pleased to announce the release of the RabbitEars Search Map as a public beta.

RabbitEars.Info

This tool is designed to replace TVFool which, although I love it, has gone very out of date to the point that it's not really useful anymore to people trying to help with antenna issues.

Please read more about it on the RabbitEars Blog.

RabbitEars Search Map Enters Public Beta - RabbitEars Blog

Feel free to provide comments, opinions, feedback, and bug reports.

- Trip

I want to thank you and and anyone who keeps RabbitEars up to date. And of course to Scott for hosting it. This tool is a great replacement for TV Fools. I particularly like it gives both true and magnetic north locations. I have checked the site several times as repack went on in Tampa and for general information.
 
I've made some upgrades to the RabbitEars Signal Search Map.

First, I've upgraded the entire RabbitEars site from PHP 5.6 to PHP 7.4, which should improve performance and security. This was quite a slog since most of the site's database query code was written with the older "mysql_*" functions rather than the newer "mysqli_*" functions. I've not found anything broken, but let me know if you do.

Second, I've added two features that had been requested. The receive height above sea level is now given next to the receive height above ground, and there is now an option to hide stations that are believed to the be off the air. I've also rearranged some of the rows a bit, having swapped the link to the instructions to the top since a lot of people were missing it, and moving the search coordinates to be above the date and time rather than below.

There are two additional features in the works.

Already done from a code perspective but not sure how to get it into the UI, I've written a feature that will let you cut off the list of retrieved rows from the search results by field strength. The use case is if you are sorting by RF Channel and want to show only signals that are above the "Bad" region, you would put in 41 and get out only a list of stations that are "Poor" or better. It should make the results tidier in those cases.

The second is a long-discussed feature to expand the search distance from within a completed study. I worked out how to do it without potentially leaking the coordinates, and have actually written the code for it. It is designed to filter out records found in the existing study so they don't get rerun, saving resources. This code is mostly done as well, and I've figured out how to get it into the UI (the search distance value will be replaced with a drop-down menu); the problem is how to make it match up rows properly if the database has changed, as it does each day. My initial thought was to make it so you could only do the updates before the database updates, but that update happens in the 6:30-7:00AM ET time frame each day, and could result in a case where someone posts a result late at night, particularly on the west coast, and then by the time people are reviewing it the next day, it's impossible to expand the result. It mostly works properly, as long as the rows haven't changed. But if a station files a license to cover, for example, you could end up with two identical rows in a result. Maybe it's just not a big deal, but I'd rather not confuse people with it if I can help it. I think it needs some more attention before I make it public.

Anyway, thoughts and opinions and bug reports appreciated.

- Trip
 
Hi Trip;

I would like to thank you for cloning the functionality of tvfool. In addition to better data, the user interface is easy to use.

One thing that I could do with tvfool that I miss with rabbitears is searching for interference from distant stations that are not actually receivable. For instance, the stations on Mt. Mansfield in Vermont reach much more than 110 miles.

Cases that I’ve investigated from Mt. Mansfield include The Albany TV tower at 145 miles, Kingston, NY at 185 miles and Mt. Beacon, NY at 217 miles.

Thanks,