Channel 2.1 and 4.1 Buffalo are terrible tonight- 2.1 is not coming in (usually rock solid), 4.1 has one bar. What's up? :mad:

Yep same here,lost just about all my channels,even ch was coming in and out. Very weird. I wonder if it has something to do with the cooler nights and warm days.

Bob

guys there is tropo going on which is killing your local reception, try rescanning you might be surprised what might come in.

You might be right Mark but I,ve never seen tropo knock out virtually all my channels. Never had this happen before.

BTW I did a rescan and not picking anything else up.

Cheers

Bob

I'm doing well in Kitchener tonight--Buffalo is strong.

The moon is full and the weather is clear. And these conditions have always provided good tropo for me.

Analogue 22 & 27 were solid here 4pm to 8pm from eastern ontario. Seems to be a northeast / southwest path... Just a few minutes ago I was getting FM 103.1 quite well (Colburg?)

Now to check the DTV...

From Buffalo 17-1 pbs, 23-1 cw and oddly, 49-1 wnyo are all rock solid. 49-1 is very dependent on tropo... the analogues 22, 27, and 61 are there with some noise. 2-1, 4-1 and 7-1 are all MIA. 5-1, and 9-1 are rock solid.

Really strange one this evening.

Cameron

I just pulled out my new CM 4221HD from the box last night in my apartment in Mississauga (QEW & Erin Mills) and was surprised on the stations it picked up. I was getting:

8.1 , WROC, Rochester, NY
9.2, 17.3 WSYR Syracuse NY (still coming in great this morning)
18.1,18.2,18.3 WNPI Watertown, NY
21.1, 21.2, 21.3 WXXI Rochester NY
31.1 WUHF, Rochester NY
50.1 and 50.2 WWTI Watertown, NY,

Analog 27 (Peterborough?)

I haven't got it outside yet it was just sitting in the living room.

Trying to get a handle on what to expect over the long nights of winter. When does the weather stabilize so I can definitively state 'these are the channels I get all the time'?

Larry

If you read through Mr. Hepburn's site (http://www.dxinfocentre.com/tropo.html) he has some great general info on the workings of tropo, and as a rule of thumb the Southern Ontario tropo season seems to taper down in September through October.

The very best times of year to install and optimize a new antenna in Southern Quebec or Southern Ontario are October or April, since you get almost no tropo to mess with your experimentation and the weather is usually nice enough. ;)

Over the years of having OTA tv, I have found that fall thru to late spring as being the best(most stable) for OTA signals. As stampeder has said, the summer tropo can really mess with your signals as they did mine last night. For a period last night I pretty much lost all my stations which to my knowledge has never happened before. Heck even CH was cutting in and out last night and I'm only 9 miles from the tower.

Cheers

Bob

I thrive, live, and die with tropo.
http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=29&q=id%3d8ecdcba97c26a8
I have based my whole set up for fringe signal reception.
Let me tell ya, when its good its good, but when its bad its bad.
So if you ask me, "Mark, do you like the summer tropo season?" I would reply "Indeed".
I guess I'm on the other side of the fence on this one.:D

Hey everybody!

I agree, these last few days have yielded some great tropo! Even tonight, I was getting Syracuse's WSYR (9-1, RF 17) so strong at one point that it was peaking at 87% on my Panasonic TV. Since Wed, I've picked up:

Erie, PA - WICU/WBEP/WSEE (RF 12-1/2/3), WQLN (RF 54)
Syracuse, NY - WSYR (RF 17)
Utica, NY - WKTV (RF 29) (strongest on Wed, popped in off and on Thurs, and only in for a couple minutes tonight) I also got WUTR (RF 30) on Wed just enough to see the picture look like an abstract painting
Rochester, NY - got all the channels, inc WROC (RF 45), WHEC (RF 10), WHAM (RF 13), WXXI (RF 16), WUHF (RF 28) and W42CO (RF 42) which still calls itself TCT of "RocheRster".

So very glad to have this burst of tropo, especially after last week's tropo was so non existant (after that crazy day when I got Chicago, I got one day of Erie, PA, and then it was like anti-tropo when the cool weather came in.) I also think Thursday morning 5am was a personal record, since I was able to watch parts of newscasts from nearly all the stations I listed above! (Oddly, the only one that wasn't coming in was Rochester's WROC.) Usually I don't get all those cities at the same time!

@ Phil81 - thanks for the compliments and congrats.....I'm very lucky to get the results I get! (It was only a year ago that I was playing around with my rabbit ears in the living room, no preamp, and wondered why digital signals were so hard to get. After getting better equipment, and setting up in the sunroom the results have blown me away!) I also think you're right that I must have great elevation. Sometimes my signals are stronger when I move the antenna *lower* to the ground! I think we both hold the records for longest tropo this year! (It was pure luck, since I obsessively watch for tropo and I only got a full decode on WMAQ for about two minutes...heh...) BTW, love the pic you posted of Indiana's ABC 21. I LOVE newscasts from tropo stations, and that is indeed a rare one!

@ PanaMark - hehe.....you were flipping on the floor, and I was just as flabbergasted over WMAQ. Even when I logged analog tropo in the past, I have never even considered Chicago a possibility. I'm also in the same boat as you, in that I LOVE tropo, and when it was slim last week I really started to panic! In fact, I was so happy when it came back this week that I've been overloading my camera with pics since Wed!

@ bwiz2k3 - I feel your pain on the RF 15 that never quite comes in. I see it flicker alot when I aim in the "Syracuse / Utica" direction. I think it's either the Sun TV repeater from Hamilton, or possibly Syracuse's ION station (which is supposedly very low powered and directional away from Canada.) But 15 has problems with Buffalo's WBNF giving analog interference, so whatever 15 this is never quite makes it to us. Glad you caught WKTV though! It's one of my fave tropo channels! I had never even heard of it until this year!

hey Garth
I find it funny you get 12 WICU yet I never get it. on the other side I always get 66-1, 24-1, and 54-1. Must be their antenna direction.

Well the current tropo is unbelieveable.
Where to start. All my Cleveland are in at peak signal, even 17-1 WDLI, 23-1 ION, and 49-1 WEAO
When I swing the antenna a few degrees I pick up Youngstown 27-1 and 33-1, and 45-1 no prob
wait it gets better,
I swing the rotor a tad more and BANG
2-1, 11-1, and 53-1 from Pittsburgh are booming! hense I swing the rotor tad more and there comes in the three Erie's I usually get.
Buffalo is not really coming in. I rotate to Detroit and voila there all there pretty solid, but wait what is this
6-1 Lansing pays a visit (this was late last night)

Having fun in the sun
Mark

Mark:

I also have gotten the 3 UHF Erie stations, but never the VHF- 12.1, not even a flicker. Probably b/c we got multi-bay antennas, but maybe 12.1 is just too weak and aimed south.

Remember folks that you need to always indicate your location when you post in this thread so that people can understand your odd reception situation better.

Put your location either in the title of your post or else go into your User CP settings and add it to your Profile so that it shows up to the left of all your posts (see mine for an example).

cheers

Tonight (Saturday Sep 05) at 9:15 pm I did a scan on my CM7000 and it found 30 channels beating my old record by 6 channels! Not too shabby for a homemade Hoverman indoors facing south out of my bungalow dining room window. About 3 or 4 channels were not watchable but I got 51 ION and WGRZ at 100%. Never got that strength before. My location is Cawthra and Queensway in south Mississauga.

sweet morning here in London
I awoke to find some crazy tropo.
Pointing to Buffalo at 98 degrees I was glad to find some new channels never seen on my television
31-1 WUHF-DT RF 28 (remapped my WUAB-DT from Cleveland)
21-1 WXXI-HD RF 16 and sub channels
42-1 W42CO-D RF 42
have had this one before 8-1 WROC-DT RF 45
then a few Toronto digital stations :o
44-1 OMNI 2 from CN Tower I presume
64-1 OMNI 1
66-1 CKXT-DT
41-1 CIII-DT RF 65

36-1 CTS-HD RF 35 presume Hamilton tower
15-1 CKXT-2 RF 15 (remapped my WEWS-DT from Cleveland)

lol, I was just shy of picking up three digital SUN TV stations at one time but I only got around 15 mins of reception from the Hamilton transmitter. :)

I was swinging the rotor around for some more Dxing but I stopped on 11-1 WPXI-HD Pittsburgh and on the Sunday morning sports (think it was the news cast) they had Jerome Bettis on so I watched his excerpt for a bit.

Getting back to the Buffalo`s I am receiving this morning
2-1 WGRZ-HD
4-1 WIVB-HD
7-1 WKBW-HD
17-1 WNED-HD
23-1 WNLO-HD
26-2 WNYB-HD
49-1 WNYO-HD
51-1 ION
I have had reception since I awoke, and it is still on. The Toronto`s were really strong but now are going away, same with the Rochester`s

This morning I was receiving WQHS and WKYC from Cleveland. I've never gotten those 2 before.

Great results tonight.. Receiving absolutely everything from Rochester (usually only get WXXI on DX days)
and CITY from woodstock is suprisingly clear for 15kW ~180km away...
(havent done a full scan, just stumbled across that looking for WUHF31 (which is 28 now :p)