Blackburst, reply to your post 958, my guess is that the other guys will shut down as soon as they can, to save money. I heard we are going to stay up on analogue ch 3 for about a month of night lite. I watched a news story that for the ch 57 analog to stay on until june would cost $100,00.00 just for the electric bill. As hard as this economy is hitting us all, any of the UHF's are going to want to shut down as soon as possible.

Roger 1818, reply to post 959, WCAX has been at the forfront of the process ever since the DTV idea got started. We sent a representative to Washington any time anything happened, over the course of the ten or so years it took. The process here in Vermont was the second most difficult and time consuming effort in the nation,,,second only to the Denver, Colarado market. (Denver, it literally took an act of congress in the middle of the night to start construction .) We at WCAX have wrestled with difficulties (like being close to the Canadian border) forever. So...it may be true the hoops we need to jump through will be significant, to be set for 17 Feb, but if it is possible, it will get done, and done right. We are widely known in the industry for being a top notch operation. Even in these complicated times, both money and logistics are set for 17 Feb, so full speed ahead it is!

Looks like perhaps next tuesday we will reduce our OTA 53 to 10% and begin tearing things apart.

Thank you FraserR for the regular updates. It's great to have someone from WCAX on this forum. As for the transition, I am confident that everything will go smoothly as it looks as it has been well planned for quite a while. Looking forward to watch WCAX on channel 22 (isn't that a paradox !).

Yesterday, channel 3.2 was broadcast in 4x3 with a picture that I would call shrink-o-vision (16x9 shrinked to 4x3). Was that just a glitch or does WCAX intend to broadcast 3.2 in 4x3 in the future ?

Thanks.

Yagi

Back to normal today, channel 3.2 is in 16x9. Must have been a glitch.

I don't know what's going on with channel 5.2 :
When the weatherman is speaking, we don't hear is voice, only music ..
That's not very porfessionnal....like nobody watching what they broadcast..:confused:

FraserR, is there a plan for someone at the station to contact Tribune Media Services (zap2it) and notify them of the physical channel switch on the 18th?

Although a bit obscure, unless this is done no one using a DirecTV HR20-100/700receiver to watch/DVR Ch 3 over the air (not via satellilte uplink/downlink) will be able to receive it. This is because the Directv units do not permit a scan but rather rely on physical channel information sent down from the guide maintained by Tribune Media. As other stations around the country have switched frequencies, this has been a major problem taking weeks to get resolved with lots of finger pointing between the stations, Tribune Media and Directv. I have lots of shows queued up to record and would hate to miss them after the 17th. (I've been told Dish receivers do permit a re-scan and/or direct tuning).

The transition has begun. A little before 9 am tuesady morning, 10 Feb, we reduced the WCAX OTA ch 53 to about 10 % power, and the WPTZ signal is also at reduced power. We have begun to remove the ch 53 specific pieces. Soon a transmitter guy will retune our system to ch 22 for the 17 FEB date.

Yagi, The 3.2 being in 3x4 format was the result of an encoder failure, trouble- shooting it caused some boxes out at the viewer end to lock up. Once a different encoder was online, the boxes reset okay.

HD bruce, I passed along the note about MEDIA services, thank you, they were not on the call list yet.

well... this tuesday night, I still get WCAX-DT 53 fine. But no WPTZ-DT 14.
Also noticed that WETK-DT 32 is lower in signal strength. WFFF-DT 43 & WCFE-DT 38 are at their regular signal strenght for my end.

Yeah my St-Hubert location is also just below threshold for WPTZ-DT. Other signals are slightly lower but still there.

Hey some breaking news to report... it seems WFFF-TV has missed the deadline to file their analog shut-off request. It was supposed to be file its request by end of day February 9th, but it looks like it was only filed on February 10th! As a result, the list of stations just released by the FCC has WFFF listed as the ONLY station in Burlington-Plattsburgh to remain in analog after February 17th.

http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-09-221A5.pdf

Anyone else having really low signal strength today on all of the broadcasts from Mt. Mansfield? CBS, NBC, and Fox are all really low today for me...

Yeah they are all at low power until the transition on the 18th so the crew up there doesn't catch cancer from the radiation. :p

As for WFFF's issue, it seems the problem was due to a technical glitch. Turns out the FCC wouldn't accept their form because they have never been licensed as an analog station (they've just been operating under a temporary permit for the past 10 years). Everyone still expects them to shut-off analog... hopefully. People have to get used to the reality that nothing will broadcast from Terry Mountain in digital, which is why I think WPTZ nightlighting is a bad idea.

Yeah they are all at low power until the transition on the 18th so the crew up there doesn't catch cancer from the radiation. :p

As for WFFF's issue, it seems the problem was due to a technical glitch. Turns out the FCC wouldn't accept their form because they have never been licensed as an analog station (they've just been operating under a temporary permit for the past 10 years). Everyone still expects them to shut-off analog... hopefully. People have to get used to the reality that nothing will broadcast from Terry Mountain in digital, which is why I think WPTZ nightlighting is a bad idea.
Well I just lost everything from Mt. Mansfield :( It was fine yesterday though.

For me, everything comes in as usual, but a little bit less strength effectively. WPTZ is borderline, but no problems for now watching it.

from Laval, I lost everything on Mt Mansfield

the only station not affected is WCFE from Mt Lyon

I don't know about WVNY because I could not catch it lately

Even on Analog 22, I have a really strong interference much more than usual

Lost WCAX and WPTZ, but WETK is stronger than ever : 100% with the CM7000, 53% with the Aquos.
Can't wait to see how WCAX will be in ch.22 :D

will reception of WCAX on channel 22 improves as opposed to before the transition?

I hope reception of WFFF and WVNY will improve as well with less interference from all those analog channels. Hopefully WVNY will increase their power a little bit as I suspect some people will complaint they can't catch it on VHF13

I have started building a Quad Cubicle and a Quagi antenna for VHF 13... but it is a bad time now for tuning antennas during the transition period with all those changes happening for the next couple weeks

Ville Saint Laurent here, just lost all of the above. Sigh, back to Videotron for the next two weeks :) Hopefully Fraser will keep us up to date as to how the switch over to channel 22 for WCAX/CBS is going as he always does (great guy!).

As long as WPTZ is back at full before Heroes next Monday, all is forgiven :p

mr_raider
It most likely won't be. :(

The view from the top of the world.....

WCAX DT 3.1 is down to very low power, starting tuesday morning.
WPTZ DT 5.1 is also way down in power.
All the other Mt. Mansfield stations are still at thier power and on thier OTA ch's.

WCAX DT 3.1 will be down in power until we can come up on ch OTA 22, 17 Feb (rescan us on the 18th)

WPTZ DT 5.1 will be down in power until our combiner is complete, which means if all goes well they may be back up sometime this weekend, in time for heroes.

That's all for now.

Hi FraserR

i notice that when WPTZ is at low power, WETK is coming very strong in there DT channel 32....do you have an explanation for this phenomenon ?:confused: