Global is back at it's regular 6.1 & 6.2. A rescan of your TV may be required for some.
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For those looking for global it's still there, you may need to do a channel scan on your TV. Global is still at real channel 14 but is currently on virtual 41.1. & 41.2. Same as it's Toronto parent station.
A friend of mine found a 30ft tower in storage. It was in pretty good shape. The tower itself was of unknown origin but it was heavy duty construction. We first dug a 2 foot hole. We then assembled 2 of the 3 sections on the ground and propped it against the house. I attached 2 brackets to the roof facia where the tower met the house. We then lowered it and added the last 10 ft section, the rotor, 10 ft mast, (old school RCA) preamp and the DB8 antenna. The tower didn't seem to take a standard sized mast so we hacked/bolted a short section of plumbing pipe below the rotor.
Normally we could raise a 30ft tower with 2 or 3 guys but this tower was so heavy we needed 5 guys. We had one man on the roof with a rope and 4 guys walking up the tower. Once up the house brackets are loosely attached. The tower base was then easily moved around to get it plumb. Once plumb we then poured some gravel and then a couple of bags of post hole cement to lock the base in place. We then tightened the house brackets to the tower. The tower is a hybrid bracketed/self supporting set up. It works due the strength of this old school tower. The rotor generally is useful for finalizing the best antenna direction. Not really for everyday use. The strategy I like is to point the antenna at the hardest regular station you hope to receive. In this case CBS/Fox from either Watertown or South Colton. Surprisingly from Mantotick, 28.1/28.2 CBS/FOX on real channel 18 seemed to be available 24/7. All local Ottawa stations and the 3 PBS stations also come in easily. We may tweak it in January. The new PBS kids channel came just in time. TVO has announced that it is closing down all its transmitting facilities in Ontario except in Toronto ( July 31, 2017). Apparently the CRTC will still allow them to be on basic cable throughout the province. Once again OTA users and rural viewers in Ontario are irrelevant. All that matters are the people of Toronto. If it was a private broadcaster this could be justified and would be their prerogative, however TVO uses tax resources from non-Toronto citizens also. Using tax resources for public broadcasting only receivable on charged private services (Cable and satellite) makes no sense.
All it does is drive the lucky ones living near a border station, to American broadcasting. As the CRTC tends to encourage local frequencies that masks remote US channels, perhaps some viewers in Ontario may be able to receive more content from the freed up stations (from the US). Unfortunately in the Ottawa area channel 24 is not used by anyone within 120 miles. Official notice: http://tvo.org/article/about/tvo-decommissions-8-over-the-air-transmitters The two local PBSs have added PBS Kids to their broadcast programs. One is 18.4 from Norwood. The other is 57.3 from Plattsburg. 57.3 had classic opera (really?) and 18-4 is a new substation. Both are 480i, but thats fine for the kids cartoons. Good for my 2 4-year olds. I have one TV on TVO (24-1) most of the time as they show kids stuff until 6pm most days. Not only that 18-4 is next to 24.1 on the dial. Now they have two cartoons to choose from at any time. No need for anything else (except Finnish kids videos).
Both 18-4 and 57.3 are easy to receive. 57.3 from the east, 18.4 from the south. 57.3 is up and running, 18-4 should be up shortly. Meanwhile "our" CBC still has ZERO of it tax subsidized programs/stations on substations.Instead selling it to cable TV. Even more pitiful, the CBC is the only primary station that I have ever received that is not broadcasting in 1080p. My script for OTACanada's Super Contours was removed this year as it used an older version of google map that was no longer supported. Super Contours is a widget I wrote that shows all the 36dbu service contours of local television stations that overlap your current position. It should indicate the minimum number of local television stations that you should be expected to receive with an indoor antenna and worst case a roof mounted one (excluding local obstructions).
I have revisited the code and now have my contour map KMLs working with the latest version of Google maps. The new widget can be run here: http://otacanada.weebly.com/stationcontour-list-in-your-area.html In my investigation, I have also discovered that my super contours are not currently working in my IOS app as the FCC has recently changed the way individual station contour maps are accessed. I will do an update shortly to rectify this. My previous web scripts used a version of the Google Maps API that was retired 2 years ago. Thus I had to retire some of my scripts. I decided to take the weekend and revisit the API version 3 (and buy a used RV!). I wanted to include a map of my hourly scan DX data. The API seems less powerful and in the end, I had to program it with Perl producing a dynamic javascript. But it produces a pretty map. Here is a snapshot from today. The map on the hourly reception page automatically updates if any new stations are found. The hourly reception scans can be found here. I may also revisit my contour mapping scripts.
Recently due to my new tower setup, I am getting more and more fringe stations from Watertown. A bonus to this is the addition of 3 new substations.
I finally got around to cleaning up the wire panel in my basement of the house. It holds all the cables from the 4 antennas on my DMX tower. I should have taken a before picture as the wires were quite an impressive mess. In the picture below, the antennas that are top to bottom are in the cabinet from left to right. You can see the three HDhomerun units (one dual input white, 2 black mounted on wall), the 4 different preamp injectors and 4 quality splitters. Make sure any 2 way splitters you use are actually marked as 3.5db loss. I use pct/channel master splitters if possible. I also put the Winegard and the DB8e on a low loss A/B switch. DB8e for normal use, the Winegard for when the DX stations kick in at night. I still need to tweak the DB8e position as it previously received WWNY 18.1/18.2 24/7 . It is occasionally off at the moment. I may line up both bays and point it between Plattsburg & South Colton, so it is 16 degrees off both. If that doesn't work I will simply aim it directly at South Colton. WCFE is not that important and regardless it is picked up by the 4 bay pointed at Plattsburgh. It will require another climb. Maybe next weekend.
edit: This is the advice from Antennas Direct themselves - "I would point between the two channels, then move the individual elements slowly away from each other widening the pick up path until they both come in." The 4 antennas are working very well and picking up a lot of interesting stations. For a while I was getting WWTI (21-ABC) every night after 9PM. We'll see how regular it becomes.
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AuthorInteresting Antenna things we're up to. Archives
December 2017
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