Growing up in suburban Boston in the '60s and early '70s, I could count on WESH walking over WGBH on Channel 2 at least twice every summer. I don't recall ever getting Miami.
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Stations running crawls during E-skip season?
- Thread starter IM42A
- Start date
Upon further review, all five Chicago VHFs were at or close to their maximum allowed power prior to their moves to the Hancock/Sears buildings. WLS-TV Channel 7 was slightly below max (269 kW ERP), but the others were full power (2 & 5 at 100 kW, 9 & 11 at 316 kW). Antenna HAAT for all five was in the 650-900 foot range, depending on which building housed their tower (Marina City for Channels 7 and 32, Tribune Tower for 9, not sure about the others).
In the social media era, you can do that now.
I vaguely remember some stations I was getting on E-Skip with a crawl or an announcement saying "Some viewers may be receiving skywave interference". I grew up, after age 10, in Western Ohio, and we got Dayton's WLW-D (2) and WHIO (7) on a VHF antenna pointed that direction. WLW-D was a much weaker signal than WHIO due to the co-ownership with WLWT, Cinncinati, and was very prone to E-Skip. WPBT in Miami was often, but not always a culprit. WHIO sometimes got wiped out by channel 7 in Detroit in my area.
With such a small percentage of people actually using OTA TV, probably few at stations today understand the problem and would not know what to do about it... such as putting a message in a crawler.
I remember growing up in Monterey, California as a teenager. My dad moved into an apartment complex after my parents split up in the early 80s. You hada choice of subscribing to the local cable company, which my dad chose not to do, or you could just plug in to their master antenna system. It was a decent selection. They even had a system that could convert the UHF stations to VHF dial positions. Between the Monterey area stations, the San Jose stations that could be viewed OTA, the translators for those stations that were on UHF and the two OTA San Francisco-Oakland stations (KTVU and KQED) nearly every channel 2-13 was covered. I think there were only one or two channels that had nothing. KQED had a translator in our area so the picture quality was fine, but KTVU/Channel 2 was directly OTA from the Bay Area, about 90 miles north. The picture was okay but often had a little snow and interference. It was generally not viewable by antenna, but this apartment complex was able to get it somehow. Maybe it was an amplified antenna or something.
Anyhow, one afternoon some other station was interfering strongly with KTVU. There was a lot of flashing or strobing of the signal and you could just make out outlines of some other program. Finally at one point, I saw a distinct channel 2 logo that wasn't KTVU and the words KSAF-TV TORNADO WARNING with some scrolling that I couldn't make out. We didn't have the internet readily available in the early 80s nor Google, so I had to go to the public library and find that year's Storer Broadcasting yearbook which had a television section. I finally found KSAF-TV Channel 2 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It was about 900 miles away as the crow flies, vs. KTVU which was about 90 miles. Today, KSAF-TV is KASA, the Telemundo affiliate for New Mexico. But that was my first E-Skip.
Anyhow, one afternoon some other station was interfering strongly with KTVU. There was a lot of flashing or strobing of the signal and you could just make out outlines of some other program. Finally at one point, I saw a distinct channel 2 logo that wasn't KTVU and the words KSAF-TV TORNADO WARNING with some scrolling that I couldn't make out. We didn't have the internet readily available in the early 80s nor Google, so I had to go to the public library and find that year's Storer Broadcasting yearbook which had a television section. I finally found KSAF-TV Channel 2 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It was about 900 miles away as the crow flies, vs. KTVU which was about 90 miles. Today, KSAF-TV is KASA, the Telemundo affiliate for New Mexico. But that was my first E-Skip.
Woah that’s a rare one to get WESH in the Boston area when analog existed. One would think a faint signal from WCBS New York would pop up whenever WGBH was off the air in the analog era.
You would think but sometimes it's odd. My two longest distance catches were in 1979 on a black and white portable TV with rabbit ears only. In south suburban Chicago, I got KIII channel 3 in Corpus Christi, TX and channel 4 in St John's NL. (It doesn't exist today).
When I lived in Arlington Heights, IL on the second floor of an apartment complex with a master antenna, I could almost always pull in channels 8 and 13 from Grand Rapids, MI.
When I lived in southern Maryland (La Plata) I could always pull in channel 12 from Richmond, VA and Channel 17 from Philadelphia every night after the sun went down (and often before), yet could not get any Baltimore stations, This is with a portable TV with rabbit ears.
So it seems there is a lot of individual things like signal strength, location of transmitters and receiving antenna that go into play
True too I was thinking this is more common with AM signals than analog TV or FM such as picking up Audacy owned KNX Los Angeles in places like San Francisco and Sacramento because KNX is a 50kw AM signal that is not directional. In contrast with FM because of my location in Fairfield, California I cannot pick up the San Jose radio stations on FM because I am closer Sacramento FM stations due to my location such as being closer to the Sacramento area FM transmitters than San Jose area FM transmitters. Yes I mean KUFX San Jose and KRXQ Sacramento occupies the 98.5 FM frequency but for different areas.
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Skywave would easily override any weak tropo.
One interesting thing I’ve found about VHF skywave reception is that antenna position usually doesn’t make any difference. The signal is coming at you and the antenna will sense it, regardless of aim or orientation.
Growing up in Austin in the 1960s and early 70s our family had a rooftop antenna pointed southwest towards San Antonio. XEW-TV Channel 2 in Mexico City was a frequent skywave visitor, along with other Mexican stations on Channels 2, 3 and 4. I once saw El Salvador and the Channel 3 in Guatemala City.
To the north I did see a station in Ontario. Otherwise the usual skywave catches were from up and down the east coast from Florida to the mid-Atlantic states, along with the upper Midwest and mid-South.
I did see KTWO Channel 2 in Casper, Wyoming one evening.
When I lived in Amarillo in the late 1970s and early 80s I was able to catch both KTVU and KPIX from San Francisco as well as KTLA and (the then) KNXT in Los Angeles.
UHF is pretty much all tropo reception. Here in Houston during the analog era I could from time to time pick up UHF stations as far away as New Orleans to the east and Reynosa, Mexico to the south, both well over 300 miles distant.
Here is a viewer from Connecticut what he DX's on OTA TV in the 1980's.
That's amazing. I don't suppose you have a high resolution version of that lingering about, perhaps?
Back in the early 70s I was running the religious shows on the AM. Go across the hall to TV. We notice skip getting into the (Ch 2) off air monitor. MC operator's a Ham so he knows DX switches the monitor to Ch 3 and it's a DX mess.
So he supers the call letters on our air for any DXers out there. Tried to get a recording of an ID on Ch 4 but the 2" Ampex Quad wouldn't sync. Would have been fun to send a 2" tape to KGNC Amarillo for a QSL.
So he supers the call letters on our air for any DXers out there. Tried to get a recording of an ID on Ch 4 but the 2" Ampex Quad wouldn't sync. Would have been fun to send a 2" tape to KGNC Amarillo for a QSL.
That's basically what WSAZ said.
This is an excellent collection. Notice that the clips are in channel-number order, and that the "11" for New Hampshire Public TV looks like a stylized "N".
Funny you should say that. In October 2024, I went to an estate sale of a long-time McCall resident and found a home-recorded VHS tape of a July 1995 Christy episode taped via KBCI Boise. Christy starred Tyne Daly and Kellie Martin in the main role. The last 10 minutes of the show, and the first 10 minutes of the following Northern Exposure repeat, were hammered by E-skip. Mind you, KBCI had a translator in McCall on channel 10 (No Business Mountain, I think? where KUJJ Big Star 95.5 is) and pulled channel 2 off the air 75+ miles south on Shafer Butte. I checked on a decent CRT TV with no blue screen and found PBS logos and NOVA floating underneath the Christy episode.
I'm pretty sure it was KACV Amarillo. WTFDA VUD reports had a Boise E-skip report (from DXer Frank Aden) of KSNW Wichita on the same night that CBS aired that Christy episode.
Picked up multiple Amarillo FMs this past summer when I lived in Cascade. Even had the KGNC-AM translator (97.5) on August 13th, a crazy opening that resulted in E-skip to Price UT (less than 450 miles!!)