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KHOU 11 Houston New Antenna

Looks like the new antenna will radiate at an ERP of 30-60 kW. The old antenna was omnidirectional with an ERP of 25 kW, so you'll see an increase in signal strength of 1-4 dB depending on direction from the transmitter.

In the direction of Humble you'll get close to the maximum 4 dB. That doesn't sound like much, but in DFW an even smaller change (from 45 to 55 kW) did help viewers to receive WFAA's signal on RF channel 8, so hopefully it'll help.

Also, the beam tilt is slightly higher (1 degree vs. 0.75 degrees), which should reduce signal strength and possible interference outside the KHOU service area despite the higher ERP. (The KHOU service area goes well beyond Humble.)

They will have to operate from a lower temporary antenna for about a week. During that time their signal may be harder to receive.

I have no clue why the news article instructs you to rescan your channels. KHOU isn't changing to a different frequency.

Edit: Curious how the linked article is phrased: "KHOU 11 News is in the process of installing a brand new antenna." Doesn't the whole station use the new antenna? ::)
 
KHOU is going from 25kw omnidirectional to 60kw directional. The signal will be somewhat suppressed towards Victoria, where there is another RF11. The populated areas in the null are close to the tower, so no issues there.

JHBrandt said:
Curious how the linked article is phrased: "KHOU 11 News is in the process of installing a brand new antenna." Doesn't the whole station use the new antenna? ::)
Click to expand...

I suspect the website writers are so used to the phrase "KHOU11 News" that it just flowed out of their fingertips when typing the article. :D
 
I noticed the KHOU 11 News thing too. Stations are totally branded toward their news product now. In my affiliate days, the newscast was just a program and a department within the TV station. Now, all TV stations produce is hours and hours of local news. Here in Tampa, the ABC Affiliate WFTS 28 hasn't been known by their call letters or channel in years. They are "ABC Action News" totally. When they do a promo showing the ABC primetime lineup for the evening it is from "your ABC ACTION NEWS station"... or "coming up tonight on your ABC Action News station"... When they do a station ID it is a big ABC Action News logo with a tiny WFTS Tampa at the bottom.
 
If they got a signal going more towards Victoria wouldn't that effect KVCT Victoria? I have my box programmed to their LD channel 25 but the other 2 TV's are programmed into the Ch11 DTV channel.
 
jras20 said:
If they got a signal going more towards Victoria wouldn't that effect KVCT Victoria? I have my box programmed to their LD channel 25 but the other 2 TV's are programmed into the Ch11 DTV channel.
Click to expand...

KHOU's ERP toward Victoria will only be about 35 kW, but that still might make some mischief during tropo episodes. Luckily KVCT has a construction permit to raise power to 18 kW, and KHOU and KVCT are in opposite directions from Victoria. If you have a directional antenna you should be fine unless you're far WSW of Victoria (use tvfool.com to check). If you use rabbit ears, you're probably pretty close to KVCT so you still should be fine.
 
JHBrandt said:
jras20 said:
If they got a signal going more towards Victoria wouldn't that effect KVCT Victoria? I have my box programmed to their LD channel 25 but the other 2 TV's are programmed into the Ch11 DTV channel.
Click to expand...

KHOU's ERP toward Victoria will only be about 35 kW, but that still might make some mischief during tropo episodes. Luckily KVCT has a construction permit to raise power to 18 kW, and KHOU and KVCT are in opposite directions from Victoria. If you have a directional antenna you should be fine unless you're far WSW of Victoria (use tvfool.com to check). If you use rabbit ears, you're probably pretty close to KVCT so you still should be fine.
Click to expand...

I am about 34 miles North East of the tower, I do have a directional antenna, it is split into 3 TV's. I never had any problems before with KVCT and KHOU even with tropo's.
 
jras20 said:
I am about 34 miles North East of the tower, I do have a directional antenna, it is split into 3 TV's. I never had any problems before with KVCT and KHOU even with tropo's.
Click to expand...

I don't think you'll have any trouble continuing to get KVCT on RF 11 then, since KVCT and KHOU are in opposite directions for you.

The only exception might be if your antenna is a Channel Master 4228, which is strongly directional at UHF frequencies but almost bidirectional at VHF frequencies. That particular antenna might be problematic in your situation if KHOU boosts their power before KVCT does. But even then, once KVCT gets up to 18 kW (and they may be there already), you should be fine again.
 
Thats good to know, I use to watch Houston TV all the time, until digital came along. Now I just have Victoria to pick up, which isn't bad TV really. I have Winegard HD7080P for my antenna. It does a good job. The funny thing is I can pull in Corpus TV more often then I can Houston now with Digital.
 
jras20 said:
Thats good to know, I use to watch Houston TV all the time, until digital came along. Now I just have Victoria to pick up, which isn't bad TV really. I have Winegard HD7080P for my antenna. It does a good job. The funny thing is I can pull in Corpus TV more often then I can Houston now with Digital.
Click to expand...

Nice antenna. An old but good design.

The big change with digital is the cliff effect. For most viewers that's an advantage: digital takes you from a lousy picture to a perfect one. But for folks on the fringe it can be a curse: you go from a weak, snowy, but watchable picture to nothing at all. It's even worse if you have co-channel interference: with analog you could point the antenna at either station - you might see a "ghost" of the other signal drift across your screen but you could still watch. But with digital, the weaker station is probably a goner and even the strong station can be in trouble without a good antenna like yours.

I'm guessing you're near Edna, which puts you about equidistant from Houston and CC. Trouble is, you'd have to turn your antenna around 180 degrees to receive anything in Houston, while CC is only a few degrees off-axis from Victoria.

If you wanted to go all-in, you could point a really good VHF-Hi antenna toward Houston and a UHF antenna toward Victoria/CC and combine them with a UHF/VHF splitter/joiner. Then you'd have to get KVCT via RF 25, but you'd probably get KTRK/13 and have a chance at KHOU/11 and KUHT/8, at least at night.
 
Well I'm probably about 25 miles west of Enda, and about 15 miles South east of Hallettsville. My antenna is about 20 feet up. I also have a AntennaCraft FM6 70 FM antenna blow on the same pole. I have that one going towards Victoria also, since most of the Victoria stations are "city only coverage" I can pick up Houston FM fine with a dipole antenna, even HD. I have tried pointing my antenna towards Houston, but never had any luck picking anything up. I did pick up KCWX channel 5 one night a long time ago even with the antenna going towards Victoria.
 
JHBrandt said:
If you wanted to go all-in, you could point a really good VHF-Hi antenna toward Houston and a UHF antenna toward Victoria/CC and combine them with a UHF/VHF splitter/joiner. Then you'd have to get KVCT via RF 25, but you'd probably get KTRK/13 and have a chance at KHOU/11 and KUHT/8, at least at night.
Click to expand...

After years with an antenna rotator I discovered I could have a small antenna for my Austin locals and a larger antenna for the San Antonio stations joined together with a coax cable splitter installed backward. No more antenna spinning and all stations are available all the time.
 
jras20 said:
Well I'm probably about 25 miles west of Enda, and about 15 miles South east of Hallettsville. My antenna is about 20 feet up. I also have a AntennaCraft FM6 70 FM antenna blow on the same pole. I have that one going towards Victoria also, since most of the Victoria stations are "city only coverage" I can pick up Houston FM fine with a dipole antenna, even HD. I have tried pointing my antenna towards Houston, but never had any luck picking anything up. I did pick up KCWX channel 5 one night a long time ago even with the antenna going towards Victoria.
Click to expand...

Playing around with TVFool (using Edna's zip code of 77957, which probably isn't very accurate), it looks like you'd need either a lot more height or a higher-gain antenna to get anything from Houston besides KTBU. But try tvfool.com with your real address - you may not need nearly as much height as the Edna post office would ;)

fredcantu said:
After years with an antenna rotator I discovered I could have a small antenna for my Austin locals and a larger antenna for the San Antonio stations joined together with a coax cable splitter installed backward. No more antenna spinning and all stations are available all the time.
Click to expand...

As long as the signals are strong enough and don't interfere with each other, the "reversed splitter" trick works great! With Victoria/Houston you'd probably knock out both channel 11's, though.
 
Well if for some reason Victoria TV changes all their sub channels to something that I don't care for, then I may get a higher and more gained antenna. but I can get about 13 channels now out of Victoria :). I have Direct TV HD for at my home place near Austin. I wish Direct TV would put out sub channels. I got a UHF antenna up in the attic here and I can get Austin/San antonio DTV OTA. I of course have Austin locals in HD on Direct TV also.
 
DirecTV subscribers who also want local subchannels may be interested in this thread about their AM21 OTA tuner. As I understand it, you need one of DirecTV's HR2x series DVRs (except the older HR20 which already has its own built-in OTA tuner), but if you do the AM21 integrates the extra channels directly into the DirecTV EPG, and lets you record them on the DVR. The drawback is that it doesn't scan; instead, you enter one or two zip codes, and it tunes the subchannels that are in DirecTV's guide info for those zip codes.
 
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