Here is an article about the WXXI antenna.

https://www.fybush.com/site-of-the-w...ill-rochester/

Thanks! :D

Really interesting reading....................
Thanks for the post.

Another little incident to add:

The last few nights I had problems getting channel 13; the audio would cut in and out and the picture would distort, although never go away completely. Ch 13 has always been strong and I've never had any problems getting it.

When I do have reception problems I usually check my bedroom TV also, to confirm that the problem is upstream from the TVs -- which it always has been.

So last night the living room TV was not getting 13 very well, so I check the BR TV and it was okay. Wut??

I check the connection on the back of the bad TV. I wiggled it a bit and the signal came in good. I made sure the nut was snug and left it. So it's either the cable or the TV terminal, most likely the cable I would think.

I'm leaving it alone for now. However, a question for the gurus: Could this connection problem only affect ONE channel? Doesn't make sense to me, but I know nothing about the technicals of all this.

Greetings Dagwood,

Yes, yes, yes. I had a similar problem with one of my home
televisions. Rf 6, which is a translator for NBC, KNAZ Flagstaff,
would intermittently have issues. It is one of the stronger signals
here but even so, it was the only channel I had problems with.
I now tighten all connections by hand and then finish with a small
wrench......

I have heard that it is also best to avoid mixing RG-59 and RG-6 into and out of of connectors because of the different diameters of the center conductors of each. The thicker RG-6 center conductor can "stretch" the female parts of connectors so that they don't work as well when you put RG-59 back into them, and negatively impact signal transmission. Also, if the ends of center conductors are snipped so they become flattened (non-factory cutting), it can cause problems. Best to cut them so they come to a nice spear-like point, if possible. Rabbit has some nice example pictures which he may post.

That is true.
Here they are:

http://forum.tvfool.com/attachment.p...6&d=1501113567

http://forum.tvfool.com/attachment.p...7&d=1501113723

http://forum.tvfool.com/attachment.p...8&d=1501114115

http://forum.tvfool.com/attachment.p...9&d=1501114252

http://forum.tvfool.com/attachment.p...0&d=1501114379

Hey Joe! I hope all is well with you. :D

More problems, surprise surprise. Channel 8 (CBS) has been out for a couple of days now. I was on the roof a couple of hours ago (no wind, but I took cordless phone with me anyway, lol) and no matter where I turned the antenna I could not get anything at all from 8. (What I do is open my 8 foot glass door and crank the volume up on the TV before I climb he ladder. It is tuned to the channel I'm trying to tweak in. When the audio comes in, I can hear it from the roof.)

Channel 8 was always one of my weakest channels, but I never really had trouble getting it, so this was curious indeed especially considering the weather: clear and cool.

So I started this post, and after the first couple sentences I decided to see if 8 was having transmission problems -- as 21 was a while back, that YOU alerted me to. Thanks for that. :)

So here it is, right from their website.

"A specialist coming in Friday will examine and hopefully be able to solve the issue."

Well it's Friday night and it isn't fixed yet. But at least I know what the problem is, and that it is out of my control.

EDIT @ 8:54 PM: So a half-hour after making this post I turn the TV on, and there is channel 8! All is well in the world again -- I can watch That 70s Show, and Heidi on Home Improvement.

Greetings Dagwood,

I suspect many, many stations have issues from time to time.
Some of those issues are made public but sometimes they are not.

Take Care, Joe
GO BILLS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hey AZ bud!

Yes, I'm sure they have problems, as I've experienced with both PBS and CBS just within the past few weeks. Because my digital reception with some stations can be edgy from atmospheric conditions, or certain station signals are always weak because of my location, my first assumption is that the problem is always with MY antenna system.

I will have to stop thinking that way when I have additional problems and will check online first. This actually makes sense because those two stations above just went out completely and totally, were 100% dead. When I have reception problems that are on my end the audio starts cutting out, then the picture stalls, etc. it doesn't just go completely dead.

Here's something I've been wondering: When I was young (long time ago) stations would of course go haywire from time to time, but it only seemed like it would be for a short time -- an hour or two -- not days like now.

Just guessing: Digital broadcast systems are more complex (more potential things to go wrong) than analog, and:

In the old days, OTA was all there was, so when the signal went out it was a very high priority to get fixed, not so today with cable, etc.

Comments anyone?

Joe, you are a Bills fan? Did you tell me that some time ago? -- sounds familiar. Ha, we will see if this year is any different.

Digital equipment is harder to fix than analog, but it doesn’t fail as often. That makes it less likely that a failed part is kept around as a spare. It also means that the maintenance staff is smaller and tends to be more specialized.

In the case of WXXI the failure was on the tower. The station does not have a climber on staff. The climber they hired came from Syracuse. (Alpha Antenna Service) I don’t know what failure they found nor if the failed part happened to be available. I did learn that the WXXI tower suffers from a vortex problem, meaning that it oscillates in the wind. That causes mechanical stress on the antenna and transmission line.

I am a retired TV engineer who also did a bit of tower climbing and antenna troubleshooting. Like Joe, I grew up in WNY and still root for the Bills.

Thanks, very interesting stuff! I don't know where else I could learn all this, but am glad to build up my knowledge from this site. :D

Where in WNY did you grow up? I'm from Webster (outside of Rochester) originally, and have been "down in a holler" between Honeoye and Canandaigua Lakes for the past 36 years.

I grew up in the Town of Wheatfield in Niagara County. From there we received TV from Buffalo, Toronto, and Hamilton.

The WXXI tower was built by Fred Nudd, located on Rt 104 in Ontario, NY. I met Fred in 1975. The owner of Alpha is Rodney Gifford. I hired Rodney many times. He does excellent work.

One of my sisters lives about a mile north of 104, in Ontario. We all graduated from Webster schools.

What company is "Alpha"? Is that who Fred worked for? :confused:

Tower Guy's background is a TV station engineer. He knows a lot about towers, antennas, and TV reception. See his post #91 above.

http://wirelessestimator.com/content...struction_News
scroll down to
Three workers hospitalized after rigging
accident near Utica, New York

https://www.google.com/search?ei=8bC....0.Nc87P1rbB8k

Not too terribly long ago, our CBS affiliate suffered a major failure
at their South Mtn Tower in Phoenix, AZ. While satellite and cable
viewers were unaffected, broadcast viewers in the Northern 2/3 of
Arizona were without CBS for 5 days. You are correct in your assesment
that broadcast is not as important as it once was. You are also
correct with your assertion that stations have downsized staff and
maintenance has been reduced.
I regularly watch newscasts from WGRZ NBC and WKBW ABC Buffalo
and sometimes watch WHEC and WHAM from Rochester as well.
I miss the area and people in some ways but I sure don't miss the
weather...... You can take the boy out of Buffalo but you can't take
Buffalo out of the boy. i've lived 2/3 of my life in Arizona. In some
ways it is magical here. The sunrises and sunsets are often spectacular!

A pice sand paper work'S well for that problem!!!

@ Tower Guy, or anyone: How do you find out if a transmitter is down?

I lost channel 8 (WROC) from Rochester last night. Still completely dead 20 hours later on both TVs, all other channels are fine.

After checking WROC's website, I Googled every search term I could think of but cannot find any current info on them.

Check their Facebook page or website...

You can call the station and possibly talk to someone in their engineering
department. It is entirely possible they were operating at reduced power
while making some technical adjustments.......

Last year we lost the local CBS station, (WFMY Greensboro NC), their tower took a direct lighting strike. Cable, Sat and internet was still was online, but us OTA guys had to wait weeks for them to order parts, get them delivered and installed before they came back on the air.

Enough of us complained they let us log on to their internet feed for free until they got their tower rebuilt. :)

I had a friend look, and somehow she found the info that I couldn't: Lightning hit them Tuesday night and PBS also, but PBS got their signal back up fairly quickly. Channel 8 just came back on sometime between noon and 5 pm tonight.

As mentioned in my previous post, I searched all over channel 8's website but never found any mention of it. That seems pretty dumb, I wonder why they wouldn't post it?

At any rate, thanks to all that replied. :D

This tells us several important lessons. Broadcast television stations
frequently have issues which affect reception. They are not in any big
hurry to get their OTA signal back for viewers. They often don't even
inform viewers of any issues they are having. Finally, when reception
is lost or problematic on one channel, don't always assume it is YOUR
system!!!!!!

Joe's advice about not assuming it's your end having the problem is sound.

But some stations are better than others regarding information. Yet the suggestion to check BOTH their website and their Facebook is solid.

In my state, a transmitter fire a month ago at the unoccupied building at the base of the tower for WWTV 9.x and WFQX 32.x still has them hindered:

https://www.rbr.com/northern-michiga...nsmitter-fire/

They've been doing good to have news article postings on their website and updating the "Reception Troubleshooting" instructions provided there.

But, they did put more information on their Facebook page than what was passed along on the main website. Luckily someone on a different TV forum pasted this up, since I myself am not a Facebook user:

~~~~~~~~~~

Channel 9: We are currently running about 75% of our normal power on a “loaned” broadcast transmitter. It is broadcasting CBS on 9.1, Local 32/Fox on 9.2, MeTV on 9.3, and the CW on 9.4.

Channel 10: Our broadcast channels on 10 (Goetzville) are currently running at full power with normal broadcast channels

Channel 45: Our broadcast channels on 45 (Vanderbilt) are currently running at full power with normal broadcast channels

Channel 32: Restoration on Local 32 proves to be a major undertaking – a key component to the 32 transmission line was lost in the fire, and new parts need to be manufactured.

New transmitters for channel 9 and channel 32 are also being manufactured. There is typically an 8-week lead time on completion.

We thank you for the patience during this trying time.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

They have had other outages over the last few years due to ice and other situations where they post insight rather promptly. And because Heritage (WWTV) runs WFQX via Shared Services Agreement, they've also accomplished other temporary steps like this time for adding subchannels.

It could be that OTA is a higher priority to them, as there has also been a history of retransmission fee disputes. The most recent one was just settled (after the fire-caused outage)--so maybe ownership and management recognize that those situations have slightly upped the OTA viewer count.

Cheers!
Statmanmi

Hi Joe. :D

Yes, it seems that they have more long-distance problems now than when they were still analog. As I found out, channel 8 here was still transmitting but on low power after the lightning strike, which didn't do me any good being so far away.

All the TV transmitters in Rochester are on Pinnacle Hill, so when there's a storm/lightning, etc. often more than one goes out, as was the case this week when PBS went out along with 8. But PBS got back on fairly quickly.

I never really thought that, because channel 8 suddenly went off, completely dead. I scanned through the other channels, which were fine, until I came to PBS which was also completely dead. My second TV was the same.

At that point I thought "Uh oh, something's going on at Pinnacle Hill." (see my previous post)

There was a cold front that was supposed to come through that evening, which it did but it didn't amount to much here, just a bit of rain. But Rochester, being 30-some miles away got a lot of lightning, and there was the problem.

FWIW: After an hour or two I checked 8's website, nothing, nor did a broad Google search bring up anything current. I don't Facebook so that was out, although a friend did check it for me and there was nothing on 8's FB page, but she did find the story on their competitor's page, channel 10.

Go figure.

In cold weather at night time RECEIVE of RF is unbelievable