I'm about fed up of attempt after attempt to get a good decent reliable HD reception, OK FYI, I also have a place that is 30 miles south of Austin. I am having a heck of a time trying to pull in KKMJ HD signal when the FM stereo is fine. I just don't see many people trying this hard to get reception, even 30 miles out from a decent size market. Sorry I about gave up.
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About to be the last attempt to get HD Reception
- Thread starter jras20
- Start date
Nothing to be sorry about. jras20, welcome to the highly nonexclusive Naysayers' Club. Glad you could find a parking spot out there in the giant lot with hundreds of thousands of spaces. Hope you found one close to the door.
Help yourself to the refreshments in the rear of the room. There's nice cold Luddites, plus nonalcoholic Old Analog Ale. And Obstructionist cheese and crackers. (Whew, that stuff stops me up.)
There's also some leftover Crow from the last Alliance-iBiquity annual meeting.
Help yourself to the refreshments in the rear of the room. There's nice cold Luddites, plus nonalcoholic Old Analog Ale. And Obstructionist cheese and crackers. (Whew, that stuff stops me up.)
There's also some leftover Crow from the last Alliance-iBiquity annual meeting.
R
rbrucecarter5
Guest
jras20 said:
What is amazing to me is how difficult it is to get 30 mile HD reception from Austin - I remember in the late 70's, KASE 100.7 Austin was the second 300 mile reception target I got from Midland, TX. It was a very dependable signal - so much so reception was routine. Too bad its format was easy listening - I finally swung my antenna towards Dallas for some really good stations.
Just crank up the power another 10 times, Igor.
Finally, IT'S ALIVE!
(But consequently kills the entire village.)
Finally, IT'S ALIVE!
(But consequently kills the entire village.)
I think some stations have better IBOC implementations than others.
I recently hooked up a spectrum analyzer and looked at the two local stations here that are doing it, WVTW 88.5B1 and WCNR 106.1A. Now, the latter is very reliable--a crumpled up antenna on the floor will get it. The former, I fought with my antenna for two hours to get reception. And it still drops. And I'm 4 miles from the transmitters of both.
The spectrum analyzer showed very clearly the sidebands on WCNR, they looked to be about 20 dB down from the analog in the middle. WVTW, on the other hand, had a slightly larger analog in the middle, but the sidebands barely rose out of the noise floor. 40-50 dB below the primary was about what I observed. I called and talked to an engineer at WVTW and he said they should be 20 dB down and that as far as he knew, all was well. But the signal's been like this since I got to school here a year and a half ago. He's going to look into it, but I can see this inconsistency with other signals too; at home, 80 miles from most of the stations, I get IBOC on WVTF 89.1C with the antenna crumpled up on the floor, and WROV 96.3C1 with minor antenna positioning, but WXLK 92.3C won't even lock with the roof antenna.
I don't know what the difference is, but it seems to me that there's a "right" way and a "wrong" way. WVTF and WVTW are co-owned, so who knows why one is so good and the other so poor, other than that WVTF is using separate antennas for analog and IBOC, while WVTW is using a single antenna. Could that be making the difference?
- Trip
I recently hooked up a spectrum analyzer and looked at the two local stations here that are doing it, WVTW 88.5B1 and WCNR 106.1A. Now, the latter is very reliable--a crumpled up antenna on the floor will get it. The former, I fought with my antenna for two hours to get reception. And it still drops. And I'm 4 miles from the transmitters of both.
The spectrum analyzer showed very clearly the sidebands on WCNR, they looked to be about 20 dB down from the analog in the middle. WVTW, on the other hand, had a slightly larger analog in the middle, but the sidebands barely rose out of the noise floor. 40-50 dB below the primary was about what I observed. I called and talked to an engineer at WVTW and he said they should be 20 dB down and that as far as he knew, all was well. But the signal's been like this since I got to school here a year and a half ago. He's going to look into it, but I can see this inconsistency with other signals too; at home, 80 miles from most of the stations, I get IBOC on WVTF 89.1C with the antenna crumpled up on the floor, and WROV 96.3C1 with minor antenna positioning, but WXLK 92.3C won't even lock with the roof antenna.
I don't know what the difference is, but it seems to me that there's a "right" way and a "wrong" way. WVTF and WVTW are co-owned, so who knows why one is so good and the other so poor, other than that WVTF is using separate antennas for analog and IBOC, while WVTW is using a single antenna. Could that be making the difference?
- Trip
tripinva said:
Could be. That's IMHO the most efficient (in terms of $$) way of doing HD, but since you're not going to be able to perfectly match the patterns of the two antennas, there are going to be places where the HD signal is way down. (I would be more scared by the prospect of places where the analog signal is down -- and you have potential self-interference...)
Is adjacent-channel interference (either from someone else's analog or someone else's digital) a possible cause?
Zach said:Savage said:
Sorry but:
That was funny.
Yes, that was very funny. I sometimes forget to acknowledge Mr. Savage's "savage" wit, particularly as unleashed against HD Radio, iBiquity as well as with some of the unscrupulous management in the radio industry who use and defend HD-R.
C5
w9wi said:
I'm suggesting the one with the separate antennas does better than the one using the single antenna.
I doubt interference is the problem. The spectrum analyzer didn't show anything else, and I'm down in a valley basically surrounded by mountains. Even DXing Richmond is hard from here with the gear I have.
- Trip
tripinva said:
If the station uses "space combining" with a pole mounted main antenna for FM analog and side mounted aux antenna to transmit the digital component, it's quite possible that the tower structure could cause 10 to 20 dB of loss on the back side, particularly in vertical polarization. Another factor might be non-linearity of the digital transmitter's power amp, which could introduce amplitude and/or phase errors that exceed the receiver's correction ability.
Great system we have here.
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