2 new stations coming to Parkersburg, WV and Mid-Ohio valley

[ohioankev]

back ot the original topic (Parkersburg)

WIYE HD (CBS 47) has been uplinked today on Directv (not yet available)...station goes live on 9/3

I have been playing around with a makeshift antenna and got these results http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnTS3xt4rDE
There is nothing special about how this is connected. There is no signal amplification or anything else of that nature just an old UHF remote antenna and an old antenna connected to a 119w/110w sat. separator. (For some reason this gives me an addition five to ten more points on the signal meter and the signal is more stable. Right now the coax coming from this is connected to my standard definition TV via DTV pal.
For the next few days I'm going to monitor the signal strengths. I want to see how they perform in the morning, noon, evening and late night. I was thinking though that if I had a bigger antenna then the signals would be higher ? I haven't had much experience with OTA broadcasts and would hate to have an antenna installed just to get one or two of the channels. What would your opinion be? According to the charts at TVFool the farthest distance is 75.8 miles for WSAZ.
Here is my report from TVFool http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=29&q=id%3de779d03d9d3088

Any insight would be helpful I just want to be sure that I wouldn't be wasting my money just to get one channel OTA.

 

[Mr Tony]

I noticed you did the testing real early this morning. Usually the early morning or late at night gives the best results. During the afternoon will probably yield only the local stations

looking at the tvfool report
-all the stations you get are in the same direction (SW)
-all are on UHF except for WOWK which is on 13 but shows way in the negative on tvfool

but the tvfool report doesnt look the best when it comes to the distant stations....if you look at the nm(db) column they claim anything above 0 is possible to receive. Now I can get a station that shows negative on my tvfool report (around -5 or so) but again terrain is key.
-even if you got a huge antenna for the Charleston/Huntington locals it may be all for naught if you want to get them reliably. They may come in here and there but at 75 miles away (and the terrain doesnt help) you are really pushing it trying to make it work. If you want to enhance reception on the locals (Parkersburg) you can get a simple outdoor antenna.

the only thing you'd gain from Charleston/Huntington if you were able to keep them stable enough would be 2 subchannels (CoolTV and the Country Network)

 

[ohioankev]

thanks by what you shared with me and what I've read today i have learned a lot. I was hoping to get this channel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WQCW I received it OTA last night and was thrilled at the possibility of a chance to get The CW in HD. However the prospects don't look that good except late at night. I think with a better indoor antenna I can get a pretty stable 85%-90% range with NBC/FOX/CBS from Grays Broadcasting. I had them up and running for a couple of days before I moved the antenna/apparatus around last night.

 

[Mr Tony]

looking at tvfool that station is considered tropo which means only during specific times will it work (tropospheric conditions)

Its really up to you if you want to stick any money into an outdoor antenna to see if it works. When dealing with that distance its a crap shoot

Here is the coverage map for that station
http://www.rabbitears.info/contour.php?appid=1363233&map=Y

 

[Stargazer]

Pretty cool how you get Charleston/Huntington DMA stations in with the UHF antenna so far away. I wonder if putting the UHF antenna in front of a satellite dish reflector will help bring more channels in.

 

[Mr Tony]

Directv made the following changes today
CBS WIYE is available on 47
CBS WBNS from Columbus yanked (as WIYE went live)
FOX moved from 16 to 22 (their new OTA number....previously they were a subchannel on 15)

 

[Stargazer]

The local cable companies here offer WTAP. I wonder if they will offer the other new channels as well. Satellite is not allowed to carry WTAP as it is out of their DMA here.

 

[Mr Tony]

since the new stations are low powered I doubt they would outside of the market......unless you're in a county that maybe butts up against the Parkersburg DMA

 

[Mr Tony]

WIYE has been uplinked to Dish today....not available yet

 

[techdss29]

WECP Panama City is broadcasting test signal on 18.1 as of 9:30 pm central 9-20-12 ---- Don't know if they have uplinked to dish yet - hopefully Iceberg can tell us this

 

[Mr Tony]

nope not uplinked yet. The Parkersburg one was uplinked a week and half after it went active and yesterday went live on dish

 

[Mr Tony]

WECP Panama City is broadcasting test signal on 18.1 as of 9:30 pm central 9-20-12 ---- Don't know if they have uplinked to dish yet - hopefully Iceberg can tell us this

uplinked today but not yet available (probably next Wednesday)
5271(4) - WECP [MPEG4 HD] added to Ciel-2 129W TP 16 Spotbeam 51 (Mktanama City, FL) (NA)
7923(4) - WECP [MPEG2 SD] added to EchoStar10 110W TP 04 Spotbeam 07 (Mktanama City, FL) (NA)

 

[techdss29]

Thanks to Iceberg for his continuous updates - This is awesome news about WECP being in HD on Dish

 

[Mr Tony]

Directv launched WECP yesterday..dish did not

 

[Mr Tony]

Dish launched WECP today...on channel 4 (replaces Dothan's CBS)

 

[Peter Parker]

Thanks to Iceberg for his continuous updates - This is awesome news about WECP being in HD on Dish

The guy does make himself useful.

 

[techdss29]

Finally - Dish is a little bit behind on this one - I still don't understand why they do not label it as 18 which is their broadcast and station ID channel number.

 

[Mr Tony]

I've noticed in markets where dish imports a network...if that market gets a local affiliate dish reuses the numbering
They did it when St Joe, MO added Fox. Its on 26 but they put it as 4 (replacing KC's Fox 4)
Parkersburg CBS they left it as 5 instead of 47
now Panama City too

I guess putting up a banner on 4 that says "For CBS tune to 18" must be too hard for Dish