Here is some background information from my previous posting: (I was thinking "drive" miles when I said that we were 60 miles from Boston). As the crow flies we are about 45. Sorry for that bit of misinformation. The following previous post was when the problem first surfaced.
Sep 21
For the past ten days or so we have been having problems with TV channel 4. This station broadcasts on UHF from Boston Mass. and we are about 45 miles (as the crow flies) from the transmitter. The antenna is an old, but in good condition, very high gain Channel Master 5 foot parabolic which is mounted on a tripod about 6 feet off the roof. There is a mast mounted Winegard GA 8780 preamplifier with a 28 DB UHF section along with a very low noise figure mounted about 2 feet from the antenna. The cable is RG6 Quad which goes into a two way splitter. We have several different receivers, Converter boxes) but the one I use for assessment because it shows signal quality as well as signal strength is a Channel Master 7001. Our elevation is 410 feet and we are surrounded by trees, some deciduous and some pine.
Most of the time, in spite of this not so ideal situation, (location) I can receive the three networks and a few independents. The signal display on the converter shows, as two horizontal bars, "signal quality" and "signal level". On most channels most of the time signal quality is pegged at 100 percent and signal level runs between 45 and 55 percent. Within this window I usually have no problems with reception. As long as signal quality doesn't fold back I usually will get no drop outs. If it should falter excessively though both picture and sound will break up and intermittently freeze. So I'm pretty familiar with what conditions will produce a good signal.
Lately Channel 4 although displaying 54 percent signal level and 100 percent signal quality has had very slight "tearing streaks" going through the picture. If these aberrations only affected the picture we would be able to watch the program. However this problem seems to chop up the sound as well. This makes it impossible to watch a program.
The weather of late has been hot and humid, which is atypical for New England this time of year. I've noticed in the past that during this type of weather we do sometimes lose reception on several channels for a day or two but never this long. I'm just wondering if anyone might have a theory as to what could be happening here. This only seems to affect channel 4, (where all our shows happen to be). Thanks, Lenny
I also corresponded with the chief engineer at WBZ and got this back.
Lenny,
My apologies for the delay in replying.
I don’t have a good answer for why your reception has degraded recently. We have not been having any trouble with our transmission systems.
Your installation sounds like a good one, though I think it may be a bit overdone, as a high-gain antenna in combination with 28 dB of amplification is probably more than you need, even at that distance. For comparison, I live 43.1 air miles from the transmit antenna, and I use a Channel Master 4228 8-bay bowtie antenna on the roof of my one-story house, with no amplification. I get full-bore signal into the TV on almost all channels. We have had incidences with viewers who had too much amplification in which they lost WBZ and WFXT, which had the most powerful signals in the Boston market (at the time). They were overdriving their TVs and as a result suffering the loss of the two stations they should have received with the least effort.
Wish I had a more definitive answer…
cid:image0...@01CEC683.AF077500
Robert Yankowitz, CPBE
WBZ-TV WSBK BOSTON
1170 Soldiers Field Road, Boston, MA 02134
Chief Engineer
file:///M:/pmasucc/Work/General%20Info/email-combo%20logos.jpg
o
617 562-5044
c
617 828-1041
f
617 787-7106
www.cbsboston.com
Then I replied back:
Lenny I wish I had answer for why your reception has degraded recently. We have not been having any trouble with our transmission systems.
Your installation sounds like a good one, though I think it may be a bit overdone, as a high-gain antenna in combination with 28 dB of amplification is probably more than you need, even at that distance. For comparison, I live 43.1 air miles from the transmit antenna, and I use a Channel Master 4228 8-bay bowtie antenna on the roof of my one-story house, with no amplification. I get full-bore signal into the TV on almost all channels. We have had incidences with viewers who had too much amplification in which they lost WBZ and WFXT, which had the most powerful signals in the Boston market (at the time). They were overdriving their TVs and as a result suffering the loss of the two stations they should have received with the least effort.
Wish I had a more definitive answer…
cid:image0...@01CEC683.AF077500
Robert Yankowitz, CPBE
WBZ-TV WSBK BOSTON
1170 Soldiers Field Road, Boston, MA 02134
Chief Engineer
file:///M:/pmasucc/Work/General%20Info/email-combo%20logos.jpg
o
617 562-5044
c
617 828-1041
f
617 787-7106
www.cbsboston.com
rbyan...@cbs.com
-------- Original message --------
From: Wufoo <
no-r...@wufoo.com>
Date: 9/21/16 11:00 PM (GMT-05:00)
To: CBS Local Site Contact Us <
siteco...@cbs.com>, "Eich, Julie O" <
joe...@boston.cbs.com>
Subject: General Information - Boston - [#95913]
Name *
Leonard Stein
Email *
captainvi...@gmail.com
Phone Number *
(603) 887-4253
Direct Your Message To CBS Local Staff In... *
Boston
Link (if appropriate)
Please forwaed this to engineering dept.
Comment
For the past ten days or so we have been having problems with TV channel 4. We are located in Chester N.H. about 45 miles (as the crow flies) from the transmitter. The antenna is an old, but in good condition, very high gain Channel Master 5 foot parabolic which is mounted on a tripod about 6 feet off the roof. There is a mast mounted Winegard GA 8780 preamplifier with a 28 DB UHF section along with a very low noise figure mounted about 2 feet from the antenna. The cable is RG6 Quad which goes into a two way splitter. The receiver, (converter box) is a Channel Master 7001. Our elevation is 410 feet and we are surrounded by trees, some deciduous and some pine.
Most of the time, in spite of this not so ideal situation, (location) I can receive the three networks and a few independents. The signal display on the converter shows, as two horizontal bars, "signal quality" and "signal level". On most channels most of the time signal quality is pegged at 100 percent and signal level runs between 45 and 55 percent. Within this window I usually have no problems with reception. As long as signal quality doesn't fold back I usually will get no drop outs. If it should falter excessively though both picture and sound will break up and intermittently freeze. So I'm pretty familiar with what conditions will produce a good signal.
Lately Channel 4 although displaying 54 percent signal level and 100 percent signal quality has had very slight "tearing streaks" going through the picture. If these aberrations only affected the picture we would be able to watch the program. However this problem seems to chop up the sound as well. This makes it impossible to watch a program. I am a TV repair technician and I have never seen this type of choppy sound on either OTA or cable before.
The weather of late has been hot and humid, which is atypical for New England this time of year. I've noticed in the past that during this type of weather we do sometimes lose reception on several channels for a day or two but never this long. I'm just wondering if anyone there might have a theory as to what could be happening here. This only seems to affect channel 4, (where all our shows happen to be). Thanks, Lenny
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captainvi...@gmail.com> Sun, Oct 2, 2016 at 3:55 PM
To: "Yankowitz, Robert B" <
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Hi Robert
Thank you for getting back to me. One thing that I failed to mention
is that this is not a new installation. We put this antenna up about
three years ago and it has always seemed to perform well.
I hear what you are saying about overload, and in theory Chester NH is
not such a haul from Boston. TV Fool never mentions the use of an
amplifier for my location relating to Boston, and I have used that
resource a lot to determine whether an antenna job at a certain
location would be feasible or not. The preamp though has always seemed
to make a substantial difference here as well as throughout town. I
had a customer years ago who lived out of town near the top of the
mountain that is partially blocking our South West view. He was
watching everything from Boston including 10 and 12 from Providence,
with rabbit ears. So I've always figured that it must be the foliage
and the terrain that's attenuating my signal.
Before digital, for my own house I used separate VHF and UHF
antennas. We never needed any help with VHF, but UHF was always a
challenge for us. The UHF antenna at the time was an 8 bay. During
this period Winegard had just come out with a commercial preamp that
had slightly lower gain but boasted an unheard of 1DB noise figure. I
had to try this so I ordered one and installed it after the 8 bay. I
pointed it towards Boston but channel 50's transmitter in Hudson NH
splattered across the entire band. Although having a very hot front
end the commercial preamp was not nearly as forgiving of overloads as
the 8780. I eventually put a 20 DB trap set for channel 50 in line and
that solved the overload problem. However in spite of all this, UHF
reception with the 8 bay from Boston was never really very good at our
house.
Since as we all know it's not possible to watch a polar bear in a snow
storm with digital three years ago I realized that I had to do
something. This parabolic which I'm presently using is a 300 ohm
antenna which I had liberated from a job about 20 some odd years ago.
I had always planned to use it "some day" and it had been sitting in
the woods behind my house since. It had a few broken reflectors which
I repaired.I looked up the specs recently on this antenna and it seems
to beat everything out there. Gain is between 13 to 16 DB, but it's
narrow beam width is really where it excels. Early on I had considered
that my problem could possibly be multipath, however just turning this
antenna a few degrees and signal starts to drop like a rock.
We didn't have cable TV here in Chester until the early 1990's, and
back then I used to install quite a few antennas and retrofit existing
ones with preamps. I had a nice Sadelco signal meter that tuned up to
channel 83. I no longer do antenna work so I don't presently have
equipment to measure OTA signals. So now admittedly a lot of this is
an educated guess. Back then most consumer equipment particularly
antennas were 300 ohms, and since the GA8780's input impedance also
was 300 ohms I kind of standardized on this amp for my retrofits as
well as new installations. The noise figure was about 3 DB which was
the best of the time, beating Channel Master's figure of 5. However
the real attraction of this amp was the very forgiving limiter
circuit. I never had one overload on me, including those used in
installations much higher than mine.
So as you might imagine I've been very frustrated with this problem.
However as of five days ago the problem has disappeared. Signal levels
and quality as measured on my converter boxes show no difference, and
if this was weather related we have had varying degrees of weather
through this period as well. We do sometimes experience days at a time
where reception is poor for whatever reason but it's always reflected
on the signal strength and quality indication on the converter box
meter. This was definitely not the case this time though. To the best
of my recollection in this past three years this particular type of
problem has never happened before.
I do have a theory though that I wanted to suggest. The orientation of
my antenna when it is optimized for Boston puts it a few degrees South
East of New York City. Do you think that skip conditions were such
through this period of time that this could possibly have been CO
channel interference from WNBC in New York? As I had previously
mentioned no other channels were affected nor have I noticed anything
unusual on any of the Amateur frequencies or my low band two way
business radio system.
We do occasionally see what I believe must be tropospheric inversion,
and we do seem to experience them at different times of the year.
During these periods, which typically last up to five days, Boston UHF
TV stations that I never can pull in such as 56 and 68 come bombing
in, and many times with 90 percent signal strength. Then as
mysteriously as they appeared, after a period of time they're gone.
This episode however didn't seem to be an inversion, as there were no
newcomers in my channel line up through this time.
In 1975 I decided that I wanted to work in broadcasting. I got my
First and I was hired as a studio technician for a UHF TV station in
Central New York. Much of that work involved translator maintenance. I
still recall (although not fondly) those awful cold trips up the
mountains when the snowmobile wasn't running to service those
miserable things. After that stint I switched careers to military, and
then industrial electronics. I took a hard look at my life after that
and since I had been repairing TV's from the time I was a teenager I
decided to go in for myself. So since 1983 I've operated my own
consumer electronics service business. Now I'm semi retired, (whatever
that means) and I haven't seen the inside of a TV studio no less a
network studio in 45 years. I'm sure much has changed.
I'm sure that you are more than familiar with it than I but I found a
rather interesting article on tropospheric propagation on Wikipedia,
and there was also if you are interested some propaganda on my
antenna.
Thank you very much for trying to help me evaluate this problem. I
appreciate the time and trouble you've taken.
Very truly yours, Lenny Stein, KC1CPX
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropospheric_propagation
http://www.rocketroberts.com/cm4251/cm4251.htm
rbyan...@cbs.com
I wanted to include all the background information before this thread began. Lenny
BTW, here are my coordinates: and although the topo maps said different according to Google my altitude is 115 meters
465 Derry Rd, Chester, NH 03036, USA
Latitude: 42.930838 | Longitude: -71.281921