[richardrosa]

Greetings All,

I have a few questions regarding reception to ask the technical folks on this forum.

About 4 months ago I decided I had had it with Cable, and figured that I should go back to Over-The-Air TV. I purchased two antennas: A dual-4bay UHF, and a High-Band Yagi. Both of which are mounted on a 5' mast on my roof. The antennas are coupled with an RCA pre-amp that has separate VHF/UHF inputs. The pre-amp feeds about 75' of RG-6 to the back of the set. Everything (except the TV) is new within the past 4 months.

I live on the West Side of the Hudson River about 60 miles north of NYC.
Although my house is about 300' in elevation, there are NO signals to be had from New York, as I am in the shadow of Storm King Mountain and my neighbours.
However, I pull in 4 stations reliably from Connecticut: WVIT (Channel 35), WCCT (Channel 20) WEDH (Channel 45) & WTIC (Channel 31).

In addition, WNYW in NYC appears to have built a satellite station on Mt. Beacon on channel 32. Even though I have Line-of-sight to the transmitter, the signal is marginal, and not always reliable.
I suspect that the transmitter antenna is highly directional and is being 'beamed' in a direction outside of my area.

There is also another local station, WRNN (Channel 48) that broadcasts on the same tower, with a MUCH stronger signal level. For some reason, my TV seems to have an even tougher time keeping a lock on this channel than the weaker channel 32.
Thinking MAYBE the pre-amp was adding some noise or overloading the set, I have tried bypassing it, with no change to the ability to decode. Without the pre-amp, most of the other UHF signals don't make it to the TV. Although the lack of this station is not a big deal, I would like to understand what is happening.

In addition the UHF stations, I WAS receiving WTHN (Channel 10) with the VHF antenna. However, about two weeks ago, my TV set stopped decoding what was being pulled in. I have an old, analogue Field Strength Meter that I have been using to adjust the direction of the antennas.
According to this meter, the signal level has NOT changed, but my set can not locate anything to display. A tunable receiver also shows a strong pilot signal (192.31mhz). Using a USB TV tuner gives the same results (no decode), so I don't think this is a problem with the TV. Has something about this station changed within the past month? Any advise or information is welcome.

The other weirdness relates to another Connecticut channel, WFSB (Channel 33).
From about 9pm at night to about 7 to 8am in the morning, the signal is good, and reception is clear. Around 8 in the morning the signal starts fading dramatically. By 10am there is NO signal at all (as per the F.S. Meter)
According to the maps, the transmitter site is fairly close to the WVIT transmitter, so I would expect similar propagation characteristics.
Although there is probably not much I can do about the signal. I AM curious as to why this phenomena is happening. I did NOT think that UHF frequencies were affect by daily changes in the upper ionosphere. Yet this channel (and this channel alone) seems to be behaving like an AM radio signal.

Other than a change of address, I don't think there is much I can do to solve these issues. However, being a technically oriented individual, I am dying of curiosity as to WHY these things may be occurring. Any light that could be shed on this mysteries would be greatly appreciated.

Thanx in advance


Rich