TV skip season is back!!

N5XZS

SatelliteGuys Pro
Original poster
Jan 23, 2005
4,516
2,540
Albuquerque, NM, USA
The Mexican stations are booming in here in Albuquerque, NM fron chhannel 2 to 6 analog, but still no luck on digital signal yet.:D

Are any other TV DXers out there getting the same thing?
 
This is the OTA area. Since you're discussing picking up Mexican OTA stations why is this not the best place?

what area do you think it should be in
 
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May have thought 'skip season' was referring to 'rerun season'???

Last spring had MPLS and Mankato stations coming in. But the weather is so NUTS I am having doubts.
Once, many yrs ago, had a Ft. Worth TX station.
 
I don't see anything "new" yet... Analog 34 is coming in again from Springfield MA, but it's the same as analog 48 in Hartford (24/7 preaching?) Somehow I still don't get 38 out of Hartford, maybe due to mediocre weather.

edit: after clicking on the wiki link I see it's mostly VHF stuff... I guess I should invest in another antenna?
 
I do. I think the tuner in the hdhomerun box is not that sensitive.
Compared to the tuner in my Sony TV and the Dish OTA Dongle, the HDHomeRun is nowhere near as sensitive. The Dish Dongle is the best OTA receiver I've seen. It pulls in channels that the other tuners show "No Signal" for. The Sony tuner isn't too bad, but the Dish receiver is better.

I used to love tuning around for skip when I lived back on the East Coast (New Hampshire) and later in the Chicago area, but out here on the West Coast, we get nothing. I'm jealous. LOL

Larry
 
It's great to hear from all the DXers working on picking up skip and getting nice results. Seems like the east coast is hopping right now.

Out here on the west coast we get virtually no skip at all. My best tropo in 32 years here is two stations from Northern California, KCVU in Paradise and KNVN in Chico, one at 155 miles and the other at 175 miles from here. I've never seen any of the Salinas/Monterey, Fresno or San Luis Obispo stations. DXing is not a very rewarding hobby out here.

Larry
San Francisco
 
Why is DXing so poor on the west coast? Its great in the Toronto area. Lots of fun on VHF especially 2 meter Ham.
This may give up some clues: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropospheric_propagation And here's William Hepburn's forecast maps http://www.dxinfocentre.com/tropo.html
IMHO, it's because of the weather on the west coast being dominated by the Pacific.
Here in the northern plains, I beleive it usually occurs when cold dry air from the north overruns warm moist air.
So basically, it hasn't happened here yet this year, it's been too cold.
 
I have never received any kind of e-skip signal with digital TV here in central Connecticut. Of course I only have an old indoor antenna with two telescoping rods. The TV is on the second floor, next to a south-facing window. It's the only indoor antenna outside of an RCA "batwing" a few years ago which gives me WTNH-TV (ABC) channel 8 [digital 10] from New Haven.
 
About 25 years ago I received an OTA station from a southern state that was cutting through another station I was receiving (WSAZ channel 3). About 20 years ago I talked to someone in Florida and from someone in the northeast on a cb base station I used to have. Those are some examples of skip. It happened during the warm weather months.

Does the new digital signals not skip as well as the analog signals used to?
 
The analog signals were viewable as long as the channel strength was above the noise threshold. They might have been snowy and unwatchable, but you could brag! Digital channels require significantly better signal quality over a longer time to gather enough data to build an image or audio track.

Often I can read enough digital data to display the channel ID, but not adequate to produce picture or sound. Use TSReader with a Silicon Dust and see the tables and pids on channels that don't have adequate signal to display programming.

For the next 6 months we reliably watch San Francisco/San Jose channels in the early morning and primetime, while the local Sacramento channels disappear. Fun for me, but aggravating for my wife!
 

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