Changes in DFW's LPTV market

Megapsycle · Feb 25, 2013

Also sent an inquiry to "Punch TV". When they first showed up on the air on two channels I emailed and got a personal response so I replied back to that email. More direct, maybe get an answer.

JHBrandt · Feb 25, 2013

Re: KXDA continues the trend

JHBrandt said:
Bob E. Nelson said:

As for KQFW RF-24, there's not a hint of any ATSC waveform there. Per another thread, I was checking analog channel 6 on the Sencore (it has only an audio component and nothing at down in the lower part of the NTSC spectrum). Then I saw your post and examined KQFW. Nada. I can only speculate that the license to cover is for yet another zombie with the ultimate purpose of filing a CP for a Cedar Hill move.

Click to expand...

KQFW/24 is still dead, but the FCC has given KXDA their license for RF 5. Expect KXDA to apply to move closer to Cedar Hill (I think they're still over 30 miles out so it'll take 2 or 3 more steps) real soon now.... :

Bob & I must be psychic. Friday the FCC got two new applications. KXDA/5 applied to move to the odd location where KHFW/4 is currently licensed (but not actually on the air), and KHFW/4 applied to move downtown (with a nice 3 kW signal, if they were to light it up).

Now we get to wait for the FCC to grant those apps, followed by new licenses to cover; then the spirits tell me KXDA/5 will decide to move downtown, while KHFW/4 decides they really want to be in Cedar Hill.

:

JHBrandt · Feb 26, 2013

Megapsycle said:
I just sent emails to TheCoolTV "info" and "tech" asking if they know they are off the air in Dallas.

Maybe they ran their course and weren't getting enough orders for the "Carol Burnett And Friends" videos so they moved on to another market? ???

Yes; TheCoolTV isn't nearly as Cool as it was back in the "olden" days when it was starting out on 31.3 (before Hot TV existed)

Megapsycle · Feb 26, 2013

JHBrandt said:
Yes; TheCoolTV isn't nearly as Cool as it was back in the "olden" days when it was starting out on 31.3 (before Hot TV existed)

Ah yes. I was trying to remember where it was last time. I recall they had only one of the stereo audio channels going, other channel was dead. This last (current?) carry on 28.2 had the audio right, sounded good. I found 2 1/2 hours of it on my DVR so I edited the title so I'll know what it is, and "locked" it. Good 'til the HDD fails.

Bob E. Nelson · Mar 1, 2013

JHBrandt said:
Has anyone noticed a degradation in K31GL's signal over the past week?

Megapsycle · Mar 1, 2013

Interesting. And pretty cool! How are the signals being measured and data compiled into graphs? Are the graphs from Frisco TX yours?

Bob E. Nelson · Mar 1, 2013

Megapsycle said:
Interesting. And pretty cool! How are the signals being measured and data compiled into graphs? Are the graphs from Frisco TX yours?

The data are extracted from a continually-running Silicon Dust HDHomeRun device, in scan mode, via a Perl script (running on a SPARC box). The script simply parses the signal strength and SNR values on each cycle through the channels. Once an iteration is complete, it gets uploaded in ASCII form to the webserver run by KB8U in Hillsdale, Michigan.

What happens after that is voodoo as far I know. I had no idea that this site existed until a few days ago until Trip Ericson wrote me about and asked if I wanted to be among those feeding data to it. As you know, this is the kind of thing in my wheelhouse so I jumped at the chance to participate.

The antenna setup, all in my attic, on the UHF side is an AntennasDirect DB8 combined with a Winegard YA-1713 aimed at Madill, OK for KXII and joined with an AntennaCraft Y10-7-13 positioned at Cedar Hill for the remaining two Vs: WFAA and KFWD.

Megapsycle · Mar 2, 2013

Bob E. Nelson said:
... a Winegard YA-1713 aimed at Madill, OK for KXII and joined with an AntennaCraft Y10-7-13 positioned at Cedar Hill for the remaining two Vs: WFAA and KFWD.

Geez... as good as you are receiving KXII-12 I need to get the old house antenna turned around pointed North and see what I get from Farmers Branch. (It doesn't work worth a hoot on UHF so it's presently disconnected, and I rely on another antenna in the attic of the garage for locals which works excellent.)

julesism · Mar 2, 2013

Hey Bob, what do you use to combine those 3 antennas? Any amps/traps/etc? I'm considering getting a DB8 for DFW UHF and a YA1713 for KXII. Would a Pico Macom UVSJ be good enough? Sorry this is off-topic.

JHBrandt · Mar 2, 2013

Julesism: Don't forget you'll need something for WFAA/8 (and KFWD/52 if you care about it) as well. That's why Bob has 3 antennas: 2 for VHF and 1 for UHF.

You could get away with only 2 antennas if the one pointed at Cedar Hill is a dual-band UHF/VHF-Hi antenna such as the AntennaCraft HBU series or the Channel Master 20xx series. In that case a Join-Tenna for channel 12 will do (that's what I use; they're hard to find though). But like you I'm curious what Bob is using.

Bob E. Nelson · Mar 3, 2013

julesism said:
Hey Bob, what do you use to combine those 3 antennas? Any amps/traps/etc? I'm considering getting a DB8 for DFW UHF and a YA1713 for KXII. Would a Pico Macom UVSJ be good enough? Sorry this is off-topic.

Here's the topology for my three antenna setup. (I'll spare the excruciating details of what things were like when I had four, one for the exclusive purpose of getting KHPK when it was on RF-3. Yes, I was a masochist).

The two VHF antennas, the YA-1713 aimed at KXII is combined with the Y10-7-13 for Cedar Hill, via a ChannelMaster JoinTenna Model 0582 Channel 12 Combiner. This neat little box notches out everything adjacent to 206-210 MHz for channel 12 to ensure there's no multipath since the two antennas face in opposite directions. So that takes care of the VHF side...two antennas as input and a single output for VHF.

Then, exactly as you stated, I use the Pico Macom UVSJ to take that VHF composite output and combine it with DB8 for, again, a single output to feed the RC-9263 preamp.

Honestly, I don't think this is off topic since the board is named "Texas TV" and that's what we're discussing. Well, technically, KXII is over the border in Oklahoma.

If you or anyone has any more questions, let me know and I'll try to answer them with something vaguely resembling intelligence.

julesism · Mar 3, 2013

Well, this is the LPTV topic ;D I just pulled the trigger on a refurb DB8 and Pico from Solid Signal for just under $60 including shipping. For now I'm going to pass on everything else and use my Terk HDTVa on the VHF side since it does pull in KXII when optimized for KXII.

eskipper411 · Mar 6, 2013

Bob, I am gonna bookmark those sites for future reference in case my signal strength goes down on any channel. I gotta know though, how do you pick up KXII? I have a deep fringe antenna and I can't get KXII from Decatur. I could get their analog signal from here in the past. I probably need an amp.

Bob E. Nelson · Mar 6, 2013

eskipper411 said:
Bob, I am gonna bookmark those sites for future reference in case my signal strength goes down on any channel. I gotta know though, how do you pick up KXII? I have a deep fringe antenna and I can't get KXII from Decatur. I could get their analog signal from here in the past. I probably need an amp.

My success with KXII is a fortune location as Trip Ericson's maps reveal:

http://www.rabbitears.info/contour.php?appid=1288668&map=Y

Frisco is well inside the 43 dBu contour and shows a lot of penetration with the Longley-Rice details. There's a "finger" extending down from Celina to Prosper to Frisco. It's almost as if the channel 12 signal follows the path of Preston Road. Getting KXII in Decatur looks a lot difficult per L-R.

JHBrandt · Mar 6, 2013

I find Bob's graphs fascinating. It appears KODF has some signal quality issues, and K25FW seems to have developed a SQ problem as well in the last couple of days.

But K31GL is definitely the worst. If you look at their "daily" graph you see random drops in SQ from an already low 70 or so to around 60. Each episode lasts about 2 hours. I'm no expert but it looks to me like something is about to blow.

Bob E. Nelson · Mar 6, 2013

JHBrandt said:
I find Bob's graphs fascinating. It appears KODF has some signal quality issues, and K25FW seems to have developed a SQ problem as well in the last couple of days.

But K31GL is definitely the worst. If you look at their "daily" graph you see random drops in SQ from an already low 70 or so to around 60. Each episode lasts about 2 hours. I'm no expert but it looks to me like something is about to blow.

In the interest of transparency, I changed the preamp from the Research Communications RC-9263 to the Channel Master CM-7777 (the original dual input version) on 4 MAR 2013. It's really stunning (especially with K25FW) and readily apparent when the change was done. The SNR dropped quite a bit on channel 25.

On the other hand, looking at the timeline axis, the increase in raw signal strength with K31GL also jumps out when observing the charts. But that boost in SS did little for channel 31's SNR when the preamp changed.

I've gathered enough data over the past few days to conclude that KHFD, at least here, offers the best bang for the buck of the LPs from Cedar Hill. It's SNR is constantly above 90% with little deviation.

And, of course, all of the full power stations just blast in with superb SS and SNR readings, thus the rather uninteresting charts -- flatlines. One exception is the occasional dip in KFWD when co-channel KCEN starts to interfere. It will be interesting to follow the timeline when fog and tropo conditions conspire to prevent a lock on channel 9.

I'll change the preamp setup a bit later today to the Kitz KT-200-Coax 2 just to see how it performs. So to recap, the initial set of readings was with the RC-9263, then the CM-7777 and, later, the KT-200. The antenna setup remains unaltered: DB8 + YA-1713 + Y10-7-13 as explained a few posts back.

JHBrandt · Mar 7, 2013

I doubt their numbers are large, but DFW's Cubans can't get a break. Years ago, Mega TV was pulled from KODF/26; now it appears Cubana de Television has been pulled from KJJM/34, leaving the latter with only an infomercial channel, a shopping channel, and a test pattern. Cubana de TV has been off for a couple of days now.

Maybe it's just a temporary technical glitch, but that's what I thought when Punch TV and TheCoolTV disappeared too.

BTW, another interesting artifact in Bob's graphs: on KXII you can see a daily dip in signal strength, when the ground heats up and their signal can't follow the curvature of the Earth as well during the day. When things cool back down at night it pops back up to full strength.

JHBrandt · Mar 8, 2013

Re: KXDA continues the trend

JHBrandt said:
JHBrandt said:

KQFW/24 is still dead, but the FCC has given KXDA their license for RF 5. Expect KXDA to apply to move closer to Cedar Hill (I think they're still over 30 miles out so it'll take 2 or 3 more steps) real soon now.... :

Click to expand...

Bob & I must be psychic. Friday the FCC got two new applications. KXDA/5 applied to move to the odd location where KHFW/4 is currently licensed (but not actually on the air), and KHFW/4 applied to move downtown (with a nice 3 kW signal, if they were to light it up).

Now we get to wait for the FCC to grant those apps, followed by new licenses to cover; then the spirits tell me KXDA/5 will decide to move downtown, while KHFW/4 decides they really want to be in Cedar Hill. :

The FCC granted KXDA/5 and KHFW/4 their applications yesterday. We'll soon see if my psychic abilities are still sharp

Bob E. Nelson · Mar 9, 2013

Re: KXDA continues the trend

For those of you following the signal charts from my receiving location in Frisco, as shown at this URL:

http://kb8u.ham-radio-op.net/nelson

Here are some additional items of interest:

Thus far, three different preamps have been in use. The first was the British import, a Research Communications RC-9263. Then a Channel Master CM-7777 was put into service on 4 MAR 2013 (look for the dip in the KXII Weekly Graph between "04" and "05"). And just prior to this post, I changed over to the Kitz KT-200-COAX unit at around 17:00 Eastern on 9 MAR 2013. The timelines in the graphs will allow a means to determine which of the three preamps used thus far has afforded the best performance.

There was some wicked (or good, depending upon your perspective) tropo pounding in the south around midnight on 9 MAR 2013. That accounts for Waco's KXXV and KWTX making the chart as well as reception of KETK (Jacksonville, TX) and WUPL (New Orleans) from the southeast. The impact on the local stations can be seen, notably on KFWD where the SS remained around 97% the whole time but the SNR diminished to the point where a lock wasn't even possible. I've long complained about the loss of KFWD when co-channel KCEN from its Falls County side would interfere with Ft. Worth's RF-9. With the advent of these charts, the effect of that QRM is visually apparent.

JHBrandt · Mar 11, 2013

I know it hasn't been much time yet, but so far the (old version) CM-7777 and the KitzTech 200 seem very close in performance. Although I'm using the slightly noisier KT-100, that's been my experience as well.

Anyone have a contact at K31GL-D? I'm missing being able to watch or record their programs on my PC since their SQ dropped so low. (The Pal DVRs have better tuners so I can still use those.)