hello any input appreciated

fishguts

hi i am from erie pa zip code of 16510 and i want to try to pull kdka in out of pittsburgh. is there any antenna with a preamp that can pull this far? i know the winegard 8200u has a 100 vhf and 60 uhf but was wandering if anyone has actually got tv stations 30 or 40 miles over the specs? i would be mounting on a 20-30 foot mast hooked to one tv. ive heard kdka has a very good signal strenth but i still dont know if i can reach out and grab it. im guessing kdka is about 115 miles away but not exactly sure. thanks

rinardman

Do you play the lottery?

You probably have a better chance of winning the lottery, than getting any reception at that distance, with that setup. Sorry.

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What, me worry?

fishguts

nuff said. dang i was really wanting to get that station for the steeler games. clevland and buffalo are about 90 miles away do you think i could get there stations?

fishguts

you said that setup. ok so is there a setup that would work? if so let me know. thank you.

JB Antennaman

Here is the situation,

KDKA is broadcast on real channel 25.

KDKA has a service contour area of about 65 miles max.

At 1000 Kw and the curvature of the earth, KDKA only makes it about to Sharon PA / Ohio and that is it!

Even a person in Oil City would be hard pressed to receive it with a good antenna on a reliable basis.

Meadville is definitely out of the question.

Now we get into Tropo Reception.

From time to time, when the atmospheric conditions are prime, a signal that normally only goes 50 or 60 miles will sometimes travel a further distance. That phenomena is called Tropo Ducting.

Just think of it as a duct in your house that carries hot air to all the rooms in the wintertime and cold air to the rooms in the summer time - if you have AC.

The duct has to be pretty much in a perfect alignment with your area - due north by north east. Sometimes when the atmospheric conditions is in perfect alignment that could last for days, as long as a low pressure does not come in or as long as the high pressure does not move out and leaves you with nothing.

Just like a flashlight - UHF only goes so far and that is it.

Because you are in the Canadian Northern Border Zone - there is laws that the FCC makes that regulates a television station's signal that prohibits KDKA's signal to drift up into the border zone and knock out a Canadian station to the north. So that is the reason why they cannot just crank up the juice. Even if they cranked up the juice - it would only travel a few more miles. At the same time - the signal would degrade for the nearest people in the local market - which is the goal of that station - to service the local Pittsburgh area.

The XG 91 antenna - which is a better antenna then the 8200U - still couldn't help you out. Even a parabolic dish would have a hard time receiving that signal - due to the fact that a digital signal is not like a analog signal - which - even when it degraded - still could be listened to or watched, as long as you were willing to put up with some snow and static on the screen.

Digital is all or nothing.

What your problem is - is that Erie is in a bad location, which is located half way between Buffalo and Cleveland.
The NFL and the broadcasters regulate which programming you can receive, and because they regulate it - they wish not to let you watch the Steelers - due to the fact that revenue generated by the television station is dependent on the programming which they have to purchase. Not to mention the fact that if you can stay home and watch the Steelers, you are not going to pay money to buy a ticket to watch a Bills or a Browns football game in person.

That is what happened to baseball in the 50's when they started broadcasting games on television, the people stayed home and the teams almost went bankrupt.

It is more beneficial for the Steelers to put their team on a pay per view channel that does generate some revenue which pays the team a huge sum of money, which puts money into the teams pockets - which helps to pay the astronomical salaries that the players receives for their service.

So that leaves you with two options.

You can (A) - subscribe to the Dish Network or another sat distributor and pay to watch all the NFL games

Or (B) - you can get someone from the Pittsburgh market to subscribe to the dish and get a second receiver and get someone to put up an antenna for the dish for you and use their account to receive the local channels - which would give you WTAE, KDKA. WQED, WWCP, WPXI.

The local Erie channels and the cable provider ( Time Warner) and the Dish Network / Direct TV, are not allowed by law to give you Pittsburgh's local channels.
You are too far out of the Pittsburgh market.

I am familiar with the local broadcasting in the Erie area and I know some of the station managers and your chance of getting them to be able to broadcast the Pittsburgh games weekly is about as good as trying to find enough snow to make a snowman on the 4th of July in Florida..

All the station in the Erie area is low power, they are designed that way - so as not to interfere with the Canada market - nor the Buffalo and Cleveland markets.

If you really wanted to feel bad, just think of the people in Johnstown PA that could not receive KDKA - due to the fact that they were too far down in the valley to receive UHF signals coming out of Pittsburgh and the fact that there is a mountain between Johnstown and Pittsburgh that blocks all UHF signals in that direction.

KDKA put up a low power translator - channel 40 - just to get their signal in the Johnstown area. Even then, that was a risk, because WTAJ is just across the mountain from Johnstown and historically, that was WTAJ's territory when it was analog and VHF.

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JB Antennaman

When you live in a town that is so bad that your residents cannot receive your signal from 3 miles away - along the bayfront or downtown, how could you expect them to receive a signal 120 miles away from the south?

Even a 300 foot tower at RT 8 and 26th street couldn't help you.

Even out to I 90 and SR 97, you would be hard pressed just to get WPSU out of Clearfield due to the fact that Cooks Forest and Tionesta - the mountains are so tall that they block all signals to the south.

When you get out to the antenna farm along RT 19 where WJET's transmitter is at, it is still 107 miles.

WJET's tower is 776 feet above ground level.

The TV fool only allows me to move your antenna height to 500 feet, and at 500 feet, KDKA's signal is still tropo at best.

For the most part, most television stations put their transmitter antenna's on the highest point in the area, so as to reduce the amount of tower necessary - to get their antenna as high up as possible, so that they can broadcast with as little power as necessary, due to the fact that height equals gain.

All of that works out to a point.

VHF liked lot's of height because it was ground following and could go up one hill and down the next. UHF - you could stand directly above or directly below the antenna and have no signal at all.
When you raise the transmit antenna, it creates a null directly below the antenna - which causes the customers nearest to the tower to have little or no reception at all. Which those customers are some of the customers that you wish to broadcast to - since commercials are what pays the electric bill.

When John V. Scholtz cannot broadcast their commercials to the people living in Erie, why would they want to spend advertising dollars to a television station that cannot broadcast to the best customers - which are the ones that are the closest to the store.

At the same time, KDKA is not going to put up a taller tower or increase their transmit power, only to loose their best customers - to cater to someone 100 miles away, which will not shop at Century III mall or buy a new car from Kenny Ross Chevrolet.

Do you get my point?

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I feel like the mayor of retard's ville..

rinardman

Well, fishguts, if you waded thru all of that...uhmm...information, you're a better man than I!

You ask if there's a setup that would work. Maybe.

A cost effective setup? Probably not. You could erect a 100 foot tower and mount a high dollar commercial grade 6' parabolic antenna and amplifier, and probably get some results. But, the costs could run into the thousands of dollars. How bad do you want it?

__________________
Sharp LC42D65U
Sharp BD-HP21U
Sanyo DP32647 LCD
Toshiba HD-A2
Potluck 5.1 surround
DB-8 & YA 1713
CM7777 & CM3043
60+ miles out

What, me worry?

JB Antennaman

Sorry Rinadman - you need to quit wading and swim in the water a little. If you read my post, it clearly says that KDKA's signal does not travel that far - Period. You would have a better chance of getting WPSU's, real channel 15, then you would of getting KDKA's channel 25. There are days where I have problems picking it up 65 miles away. Double that distance - and you can pretty much forget it.

I have been at the top of JET's tower, there is no signal up there.

__________________
I feel like the mayor of retard's ville..

NonMcTubber

There is always TVFool, and even if a generic address report is somewhat dubious, here is your generic address report.

http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wr...9fbec1cf4bfea0

In terms of KDKA, its not even listed although some stations are listed down to -19.8(NM db)

Unless you have occasional very rare tropo ducting, I would have to say it hopeless for KDKA. Especially given the fact that topo ducting is more common in the summer rather than football fall and winter football season.

But two things additional to say.

(1) Your generic address reports implies you can receive some decent closer OTA television. Even with just cheap rabbit ears although an outdoor antenna and a rotor can deliver far more.
But an exact address TVFool report is the better gold standard.

(2) While all hope of getting KDKA is somewhat hopeless, its possible that some closer possible to get stations are repeater stations for KDKA. Either call KDKA and see if they have repeater stations with different call letters, or google each station's call letters and check content. You just want to watch the game, and who knows who else carries it OTA. You might get lucky and find another gettable station that carries the games you want.

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High definition is not the definition of my life.
But knowledge is power and HD does have some potential to increase content variety and choices.

rinardman

Sorry, JB, I'm not much of a swimmer.

Especially when it gets deep!

__________________
Sharp LC42D65U
Sharp BD-HP21U
Sanyo DP32647 LCD
Toshiba HD-A2
Potluck 5.1 surround
DB-8 & YA 1713
CM7777 & CM3043
60+ miles out

What, me worry?

fishguts

thanks for all the replies guys. i do not know to much about this stuff and am not going to get into it to deep doller wise. i was wandering if you could help me out with a question? i made that youtube antenna just for something to do and i got like 12 digital channels very clear and 14 analog channels some are somewhat clear and some very fuzzy thats on a new hd flatscreen tv.. i thought analog was done away with and i hear that analog channels travel up and down valleys like sound so my question is how come i can get analog channels here in erie but at my camp located in tidioute i currently have a 25 year old channel master mounted on a mast with a digital converter box hooked up to the projection screen tv and i can only get 3 digital channels and absolutly no analog channels. at the time that channel master was suppose to be the best on the market for residential use so now i have that winegard 8200u on the way that im going to replace that old channel master with. i hope i didnt throw money away or do you think it should give me more channels then that old channel master? i dont know how much antenna technology has changed over the last 25 yrs so thats why im asking some of these questions. i know i wrote a big post here and sry if i confused anyone. thank you

NonMcTubber

No fishguts, you failed to confuse me. You simply ask why your old channel master antenna fails to preform now? Maybe its antenna corrosion, maybe its deteriorated coax cable, maybe something is blocking signal where its installed, who knows, but it was worth investigating before you ordered a new all channel antenna. Now add all new RG-6 cable, ditch the converter box if not needed, play with aim, maybe add a rotor, and very good chance, you will have much better performance than your homebuilt antenna.

Even if the digital spectrum is somewhat shrunk at the top and the bottom, nothing has really changed in antenna technology due to the digital conversion.

But in terms of now mainly low power only analog stations, they don't have the digital cliff effect of digital stations. And may carry further at the cost of a very poor and snowy picture.

__________________
High definition is not the definition of my life.
But knowledge is power and HD does have some potential to increase content variety and choices.

fishguts

your telling me to ditch the digital converter box at my camp. i thought i had to have it seeing the tv at camp is a 7 year old projection tv. the cable is new. i replaced it a few months ago and got 3 channels out of the old channel master and figured if i was to go with the winegard 8200u i would get at least 8 stations im hoping. i have a rotor and the camp is in titioute so i know i can pull the stations out of erie but im hoping to pull some from somewere else as well. also what preamp do you reccomend? ive got a 30 or 40 doller one from radio shack but since im not at camp right now i cant tell you what the heck it is. thanks again

JB Antennaman

I will add a comment to this - and that comment is that unless you read my first post and take it to heart, there is no way to understand my second post now.

All Frequencies reduce at the square of the distance away.

When you are in downtown Erie, the transmitters are less than 10 miles away and even then, with the reduced power of the transmitters - it is not a problem to pick up most stations.

Now my expertise in this field in this area is due to the fact that I have done support work for WJET and WICU and I know these people and their situation.

At the same time, London Ontario is only 26 miles across the lake.
The Ontario stations comes in with little difficulty and at the same time, their shut off date for the analog is not until next year - I believe.

In special circumstances, there is opportunities for some low power stations - that cannot afford the move to digital to stay where they are at. In the long run, they will be shooting themselves in the foot - because soon, all tuners will only be offered in digital and then you will need a converter box to receive analog.

As far as Tidioute goes, you got to read my first post and go back on this forum to last year when we discussed in great detail how UHF digital does not go up one hill and down the next. Anything 3 or more stories - including mountains - will block all signals.

When you are deep in the Allegheny National Forest and even with a 50 foot mast, there is no signals available - the chances of a 20 year old antenna, that did work with analog VHF - working with digital UHF - you got about a snowballs chance in h3ll of getting anything down there.

Here is the TV fool at 50 feet AGL
http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wr...9fbe62ba808304

Old technology antenna's worked well with analog VHF because their VHF side was very good. The UHF side was usually only advertised to receive to 40 miles - because for most places that was line of sight. To keep from being sued and to keep people from feeling that their antenna was misrepresented, the manufacturer only advertised that it was good to 40 miles.

UHF - the tuner was 4 times as noisy as VHF and half or more of the signal was lost between the antenna and the television inside of the coax for most installs.

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I feel like the mayor of retard's ville..

jim5506

With a 500 ft tower and the very best antenna available you would probably still not get a stable signal.

From the highest elevation in your area (1210ish ft.) on that 500 ft. tower, the TVFool report still leaves you at -14.2dB.

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