Unintentional (DX, etc.) pick-ups on old cable systems

[Stanislav]

As a corollary to my post about bad off-air pick-ups on old CATV systems, what about incidents in which the primary target station is off the air, and another, more distant station is accidentally relayed on the system?

Three examples: two personally observed, one read about...

-- Back in the 70's in Orlando, one afternoon WESH-2 went off the air for several minutes. Visible during that time on their cable channel was a snowy, but rather steady CBS signal. Given the heading of the intended target (and the character of the signal -- there was no e-skip at the time, nor did the signal look like skip), the only possibility would have been WFMY in Greensboro, North Carolina. At 500 or so miles, it seems a bit far-fetched for middle of the day dead-band tropscatter, but with the head-end cut-to-channel antenna at some height and WFMY being on almost the same heading, it's not impossible.

-- Also in the 70's, well before I lived there (that was many years later), I spent a few days in Tallahassee. At the time, they carried WMBB-13 in Panama City and, one morning prior to WMBB signing on, there was a very clear and watchable image from WLOX in Biloxi.

-- This one I read about in on old WTFDA bulletin (though I lived for a time in the same city, I never observed this)...a DXer in Jacksonville reported that on a couple of occasions, during intense trans-Gulf tropo, the cable system accidentally carried a strong, steady signal all night long from KRGV-5 in Weslaco, Texas (close to 1000 miles via tropo!) after WUFT-5 Gainesville signed off! He said that WUFT was picked up by the system via a quad-stack of yagis at 300' or so, and the heading to Gainesville also lined up almost perfectly with Weslaco, so again while unusual, not at all improbable!

Other examples?

 

[Tim L]

At least once years ago, on Canton, Ohio's Time Warner System..WAKR-23 Akron was on Cable Channel 4..When Akron's 23 was off the air one night, WKAR-23 East Lansing, Michigan PBS came through on Channel 4. Another time WEYI-25 Saginaw, Michigan came in where WVIZ-25 Cleveland should have been (I think Cable 2)..

Another odd thing..In early digital cable boxes, the software had a glitch, where I was getting The Cable station lineup for Time Warner's Los Angeles System one evening..Of course, the channels didnt come in..

 

[oburn]

one year i was in fort walton florida i picked up one the early morning on cable a station in thunder bay ontario i couldnt believe it it was a clear picture they were having a program similar to capt kangaroo no commercials

 

[mleach]

Back in the early 80's, the Martinsburg, West Virginia then-Time Warner system whenever a station would go off the air the next closest on the same channel will pop up. When Harrisonburg, VA's WHSV would sign off..in comes Philly's KYW. DC's WRC signs off...here comes WTAE from Pittsburgh. My brother in law can recall once when WTTG out of Washington went dark for the night, he saw WCYB from Bristol,VA..very clear..but the next week...it was NYC's WNEW on channel 5 when WTTG took the night off...funny thing was he had no idea that station was in New York since back in those days both WNEW & WTTG were Metromedia with more/less the same line-up and logo but when he saw John Roland doing the news on WNEW...that was the tip off LOL

Some years back I was reading on another site about the cable system in Virginia Beach back in the 70s where whenever the big three local network affiliates would signed off for the night WTAR, WAVY and WVEC.....Philly's KYW and WCAU and Baltimore's WJZ would end up taking their place. Sadly the poster didn't say just how well those channels came in on Virginia Beach cable.

 

[mrfish67]

I remember one night back around 1984, Citizens Cable of Allen County (Fort Wayne, Indiana) received WOSU from Columbus, Ohio, instead of WNIT from South Bend. Both stations were on channel 34. The WOSU signal was nearly as clear as a local channel.

WNIT was one of 4 PBS stations on the lineup at that time. Its reception was nearly always quite snowy at best and was eventually dropped.

The Fort Wayne area was interesting for DX pick-ups. I used to get Toledo, Lima, Detroit, Dayton, Columbus, and South Bend stations when conditions were right. For some reason, Indianapolis rarely came in for me, though.

 

[Ultimajock]

...at one point during the summer of 1987, when I was living in Neenah, Wisconsin, WCIU/26 Chicago would repeatedly overpower the signal of the intended station, WGBA/26 Green Bay, on the Warner Cable system there. And one morning in the winter of 1994, when I lived in Oshkosh, the same system experienced an odd skip situation whereby both CBFT/2 Montreal and CKCW/2 Moncton NB overpowered the signal of WBAY/2 Green Bay one Saturday morning. The same system would frequently have so many skip problems with WRTV/6 Indianapolis overtaking WITI/6 Milwaukee that they eventually dumped WITI from the system in the early '80s...

 

[Mike Stroud]

I remember one night back around 1984, Citizens Cable of Allen County (Fort Wayne, Indiana) received WOSU from Columbus, Ohio, instead of WNIT from South Bend. Both stations were on channel 34. The WOSU signal was nearly as clear as a local channel.

WNIT was one of 4 PBS stations on the lineup at that time. Its reception was nearly always quite snowy at best and was eventually dropped.

The Fort Wayne area was interesting for DX pick-ups. I used to get Toledo, Lima, Detroit, Dayton, Columbus, and South Bend stations when conditions were right. For some reason, Indianapolis rarely came in for me, though.

Yeah, it is quite strange you couldn't get Indianapolis, since the northern two-thirds of Indiana is basically flat, level prairie. Not even many rolling hills as we have here down South. Although not a techie and not in the know about such things, I would surmise that DX signals do not fare well traveling northeastward. I'm more than certain that's not right, though. Any hobbyists care to explain?

 

[bpatrick]

As a corollary to my post about bad off-air pick-ups on old CATV systems, what about incidents in which the primary target station is off the air, and another, more distant station is accidentally relayed on the system?

Three examples: two personally observed, one read about...

-- Back in the 70's in Orlando, one afternoon WESH-2 went off the air for several minutes. Visible during that time on their cable channel was a snowy, but rather steady CBS signal. Given the heading of the intended target (and the character of the signal -- there was no e-skip at the time, nor did the signal look like skip), the only possibility would have been WFMY in Greensboro, North Carolina. At 500 or so miles, it seems a bit far-fetched for middle of the day dead-band tropscatter, but with the head-end cut-to-channel antenna at some height and WFMY being on almost the same heading, it's not impossible.

-- Also in the 70's, well before I lived there (that was many years later), I spent a few days in Tallahassee. At the time, they carried WMBB-13 in Panama City and, one morning prior to WMBB signing on, there was a very clear and watchable image from WLOX in Biloxi.

-- This one I read about in on old WTFDA bulletin (though I lived for a time in the same city, I never observed this)...a DXer in Jacksonville reported that on a couple of occasions, during intense trans-Gulf tropo, the cable system accidentally carried a strong, steady signal all night long from KRGV-5 in Weslaco, Texas (close to 1000 miles via tropo!) after WUFT-5 Gainesville signed off! He said that WUFT was picked up by the system via a quad-stack of yagis at 300' or so, and the heading to Gainesville also lined up almost perfectly with Weslaco, so again while unusual, not at all improbable!

Other examples?

I'm surprised there weren't a lot of OTA interference problems between WMBB and WLOX, especially around Mobile. Likewise, it would seem that WJHG Panama City and WDAM Laurel/Hattiesburg, MS, would have had interference problems; both are on Ch. 7.

 

[KML0224]

One night in 1990 or so, here in New Britain, CT (close to Hartford), WGBY-TV (PBS) channel 57 of Springfield, MA signed off for the night. What should pop on a few minutes later? A weak signal of WGBS-TV (IND) channel 57 of Philadelphia!

 

[Stitch]

Our local cable company in west-central Indiana yielded a number of pickups over the years (until Comcast took over).

WTTV channel 4 in Bloomington was a frequent example. When the station signed off early Monday mornings, one could frequently pick up WCMH out of Columbus. One rare occasion saw WBZ/Boston and WNBC/New York interferring with WTTV on a weekday afternoon.

It wasn't alone. When WVUT channel 22 in Vincennes signed off every night, an infrequent subsitute on cable was WKEF Dayton. WSBT in South Bend made one appearence, as did WCTE in Cookeville, TN.

Another example was a time period when the cable company carried WEHT channel 25 out of Evansville as the default ABC affiliate for the area. Hampered by a weak signal, it wasn't out of the norm to see a near-clean picture some nights from WEEK/Peoria.

Same cable company once carried WUSI channel 16 out of Olney, IL. An pre-sign-on pick up was then-WJWT/Jackson, TN (now WJKT).

The last time something like this happened was a couple of years ago when WTWO in Terre Haute had a transmitter failure. Instead of the usual soap opera, a weak signal from a repeater of XHGC channel 5/Mexico City was seen. Still haven't figured out the location of this signal. Did manage to record a few minutes of it just for kicks.

 

[stdjsb25]

On a good night, back in the day....when KLTV Channel 7 in Tyler would sign off and shut down their transmitter, one could get KATV Channel 7 from Little Rock, Ark, even though it was only a test pattern from there.

 

[Gregg]

When I was living in Westchester County, the cable system used to pick up over the air from about 40 miles away the Connecticut PBS station in Bridgeport, WEDW Channel 49.

One night when they signed off, WGCB-TV from Red Lion PA beamed in, fairly well. Red Lion is between York PA and Baltimore. It was a religion station and overnight it was airing something called GTV, a religious MTV, showing videos of Christian AC songs.

Oddly, Red Lion isn't in line with Bridgeport. In fact, I guess it's about 180 degrees opposite Bridgeport.

Eventually, the cable system gave up trying to pull in the WEDW signal, especially since they were providing three other PBS stations (13, 21 and 25).



Gregg
[email protected]

 

[hipman2]

On the old Mission Cable system in San Diego, in the early 70s, cable 3 was once used for KCST 39, a then-small UHF independent that is now KNSD, an NBC affilliate on cable 7. But in early 1970s, KCST didn't sign on until later than 7am, but around that time on Saturday mornings, I could hear the audio of the sign-on for KEYT channel 3 in Santa Barbara.

In 1992, on Monday mornings from 3am-5am, cable 13's resident channel KCOP 13 from Los Angeles signed off for the time, but Cox picked up the audio for KSWT channel 13 in Yuma. There was somewhat of a weak picture on the channel, and at the time, it ran Telemundo programs overnight such as wrestling, which I saw in Spanish.

 

[compubit]

Mid 90s (summer), in Destin, FL, trying to watch WPGX/28 out of Panama City, but was being overpowered by WFTS/28 in Tampa.

Late 80s (summer), in College Station, KXAN/36 from Austin was overtaken by an unknown station - had to switch over to KCEN/6 to keep watching programming...

Probably have seen others, but can recall off the top of my head...

Jim

 

[gr8oldies]

Back in West Central Ohio, WHIO-TV 7 was the strongest over the air signal, and thus, on old-style cable, too. Occasionally, though, the cable signal would be wiped out by channel 7 in Detroit. We also got WLW-D/WDTN 2, which would be interfered with by e-skip. I also recieved a channel 35, I think out of the Grand Rapids area, once WLIO in Lima had signed off.

 

[mjlarochelle]

Belleville, Ontario used to get WWNY/7 from Watertown on Cable 7, but it was not unheard of to get either WKBW from Buffalo or the Global TV repeater from Midland interfering with WWNY.

 

[fybush]

Belleville, Ontario used to get WWNY/7 from Watertown on Cable 7, but it was not unheard of to get either WKBW from Buffalo or the Global TV repeater from Midland interfering with WWNY.

And in Rochester, we used to get WWNY on cable 7 after WKBW signed off for the night!

(Much later, when I finally was able to put up a rooftop antenna, I could swing it back and forth between WKBW and WWNY on analog 7 most summer evenings and get clear pictures on either one.)

 

[hipman2]

In July of 1979 one night, I fell asleep while watching a movie on HBO. When I woke up at 5am, "Today" from NBC came on the air, on the cable system's HBO channel slot. Then it went into a test pattern again, then the cable company blacked out the feed until 2pm when HBO came on showing TV and radio promos for stations to use. At 3pm, the HBO channel went into pre-sign on mode until 5pm when it signed on again.

Can anyone explain that Today on HBO thing? I'm guessing that it was the first hour of Today from an hour ago refeeded for the Central time zone stations to use, and NBC refed the second hour of Today at 9am ET (8am CT) for Central affilliates to use.

 

[FreddyE1977]

in Pittsburgh when WTAE used to sign off overnight, the old Warner QUBE system used to pick up WRC out of Washington, DC. I have this on a VHS tape someplace if I can ever find it. Also lived in Toledo where WZZM from Grand Rapids, MI would come in whenever WTVG was off the air.

 

[charlestondxman]

I don't remember any big pickups on local cable systems, but some of the cable systems farther away from Charleston picked up their signals off the air, and they did until the digital transition.

The local Charleston VHFs (2, 4, 5, and 7) would frequently get taken over by stations from Jacksonville and down south (especially 2 and 4). The Myrtle Beach system back in the 70s and 80s had a problem with this, probably, as they had several Charleston stations, Wilmington's 3, 6, and 26, and stations with Florence, and stations probably frequently cut in.