Phil81..... you got me almost pegged..... I am right beside Seacliff Park.....

I am using a quickly (not really well made) GH and right at the moment I am pointed due west.... I think I might have to play with the direction a bit...

Hello kwboom,

What kind of stuff do you pick up currently? If there are trees in the direction or in front of the antenna (like here) they can really devastate and absorb the signals.

You should do rather well with the UHF Toledo stations since you have LOS. Many if not all the Detroit stations are doable down here but may require slightly more height due to the ridge.

If your coax run is longer than maybe 30 feet and if your feeding multiple tuners a low noise antenna preamplifier like a Channel Master 7777 or 7778 or similar can drastically bring up signal strength on weak far away stations.

My old high school buddy lives on the north side of Seacliff Dr. just east of County road 31 very close to the lake. His house suffered some electronics damage on Jun 25 this summer from a lightning strike and had some antenna shop replace everything on his tower (old antenna, fried preamp,coax wire, new rotor) and now his reception is far better than mine. Of course 50+ft of height and no obstructions helps.

It's pointing SSW in the picture.
http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/picture.php?albumid=329&pictureid=1549
(i wish I had a tower)

WOW! kwboom's TV fool plot shows the MacGregor stations as 2-edge refraction, even though they are barely 30 km away!

I never thought of that part of Ontario as being hilly, though I have had too few opportunities to visit there.

His best bet may to get a mid-size V/U combo pointed at Toledo.

BTW - 24.3 Toledo America One is not blacking out CFL football over-the-air, though pixellation is pretty heavy on that channel.

it's not hilly per-se, it's just a ridge from lake erosion, called the Onondaga Formation... it's like a mini-escarpment that travels along the north shore of lake erie, from near Niagara Falls (where it meets the Niagara Escarpment), to its most-pronounced point in Ruthven, before fading out and becoming a mere rise of 10-20 feet along the Detroit river right to Downtown Windsor (before fading altogether).

nice, USA CBC Fan! you get to watch CFL without paying for cable! 24.3 though... it's pixellated because it's compressed. HD, SD, compressed SD...

now, i know you're on the American side of the river... but where in particular are you located? (this will help me if i have a chance at getting WNWO agian for myself, or if i shouldn't bother)...

Hi RTF,

I recall his location from a few pages back asking me about CBET's directional antenna... he is from Temperance, MI in southern Monroe co. It's like 4 or 5 miles north of suburban Toledo. The Oregon tower farm is probably like 8-10 miles ESE from his location.(probably his strongest market too :P)

I picked it up enough to see how blocky the two sub channels are. At least WNWO hasn't skimped on main channel quality. Out of the three NBC affiliates I (at times) can get they have the highest quality main HD channel bitrate of them all. Go figure. (data originally from TSReader)
WNWO: 24-1 14.95Mbps
WKYC: 3-1 14.75
WDIV: 4-1 12.75

i've been through temperance before. cute little town i wouldn't mind living in if i moved stateside!

only 8 miles away from the Oregon transmitter farm? no surprise for quality signals then.

nice! i wish i could pick up the toledo and cleveland stations... toledo is a "maybe" at this point, and cleveland's a "fugeddaboutit" unless there's tropo skip...

Yes, the Oregon tower farm signals are, well, a royal PITA, since they render almost any RF preamplifier useless due to overload, and will overload the tuner itself if an unamplified antenna is pointed at the Southeast.
On the good side, the flat terrain provides excellent reception of all Detroit's full power stations except 38 (15 miles further away on a short tower), and being close to the Western end of Lake Erie provides for great tropo DX in the spring (in one year, three Buffalo DTVs were in about half of the spring afternoons)

Phil 81 is dead on about WNWO's bit allocation. RTV and especially America One is heavily compressed to provide a good picture of NBC on 24.1
In the case of 24.3, I suspect they set the bandwidth for that sub when it was NBC Weather Plus - where most of the picture had no motion at all - and kept that bandwidth with America One. You can tell by watching RTV or America One whether NBC is running an HD program or not. When 24.1 has an HD program, and the program has a scene with fine detail and/or motion, the subchannels suddenly get really pixellated, I mean like Real Video when we all used 56k dialup!

Hey all,

Been reading this forum for a while and finally decided to join. I'm located over on the east side of Windsor near Tecumseh and for a while was running a simple 4-bay coat hanger antenna that picked up all the locals with the antenna located in my attic. Recently I decided to upgrade and purchased an AntennaCraft HBU33 along with a 16db pre-amp. The thing is in my garage up in a storage loft about 10feet off the ground pointed at Toledo and here's the digital stations i'm picking up:

2-1, 2-2 WJBK
4-1, 4-2 WDIV
7-1, 7-2, 7-3 WXYZ
11-1, 11-2 WTOL
13-1, 13-2, 13-3 WTVG
20-1 WMYD
30-1, 30-2, 30-3, 30-4 WGTE (extremely weak)
38-1, 38-2 WADL
50-1 WKBD
56-1, 56-2, 56-3 WTVS
62-1 WWJ

If I aim straight west (275 azimuth) I can pickup 31-1, 31,2, 31,3 ION network
If I am north I can pickup 28-1 WFUM

I am going to be doing a roof mount this coming week, along with a rotor. I have read up about rotors on this site and others... it seems the CM 9521A is descent, but does have some issues... for the price it will do, i'm not willing to spend hundreds more on something better.

I am hoping to be able to pickup the rest of the Toledo stations that have a weaker signal out this way: 24-1 WNWO, 36-1 WUPW. I would also like to pickup some Cleveland but that looks like a stretch since my TVfool says they are all in excess of 90 miles away. My antenna is rated at 60 miles UHF, 70miles VHF.... kinda wish I had gone with the 44 model now but we will see what I can pickup. I will post results....
Anyone out this way picking up more?

i pick up WPXD-DT 31 on a regular basis... it's good to see someone 10 miles east of me snagging it, too.

On rare occasions, i can pick up WGTE-DT from Toledo, and i've picked up WEWS-DT via tropo skip on a couple occasions this summer.

You want to pick up WFUM-DT from flint? it's doable, as their transmitter's only 55 miles NNW of us in northern oakland county. WUPW-DT might not be doable becuase it's on 46, and WBSF-DT Flint is also on 46. WNWO-DT, i've found, has a null towards windsor and detroit to protect WDIV-DT, so it might also not be doable, though others on the west end near me have managed to snag it in the past.

Cleveland stations *will* visit you via tropo during the summer months. though my antenna's fairly weak, i've gotten partial locks on all of the listed stations, and several others. if you were to go a bit higher and get a bit stronger of an antenna, you'd be able to pull in these stations.

It seems as though the Detroit signals are not as powerful as Buffalo. This is taken from the experiences of DHC members that not all Detroit stations can be easily received in the greater Windsor area. Flint is difficult at 55 miles away? In contrast, I'm 70 to 75 miles away from the Buffalo signals and get them 24/7 with just a 4221HD. In addition, folks in Kitchener are also getting the Buffalo signals and they must be about 100 miles away. Granted Kitchener is rather high, while Windsor is lower (?), but there doesn't seem to be any major obstructions. Or maybe the Detroit stations are simply lower powered with even less power directed to Ontario. Maybe Detroit signals are better received further east, like in the Chatham area... Just some musing. But you would think that with a city so big (much bigger than Buffalo), that Detroit would have plenty of high power TV stations, similar to the radio stations like the RIFF which booms into Ontario. (Last thing, Leafs stink.)

Thanks for the info..... Do you pickup WUPW at all? I'm trying to get another FOX station for more hi-def football games on the weekends. I have WTOL right now, so I get 2 CBS channels which is nice. I experienced a bit of tropo this summer picking up a few odd channels with my 4-bay.

What kind of antenna setup are you running RingtailedFox?

Thats pretty good DigitalRocks, considering the distance for Toledo. You should get them a bit better yet on the roof.


WPXD is very rare here because I have to aim at almost the same azimuth as TVO on ch32 which bleeds into it badly. Once ION moves to RF50 then it'll be doable most every day I imagine. WFUM is very rare on account WUAB in Cleveland is on the same channel.

While you can get WTVG/WTOL VHF channels they will at times suffer from dropouts and pixellation when there is interference of any kind strong enough to overcome the signal as is the case here. (doesn't take much on VHF Dtv) Lightning does it 100% of the time when there is some. Heh even tonight a noisy truck/car drove by around 7pm while I was watching 13's delayed news and wow did it ever suffer bad before recovering again. Even our electric stove/top elements cause dropouts when they cycle on/off. This is with a good vhf gain combo antenna on the roof at 26 feet with a high gain CM7778 preamp too.

WGTE is the easiest UHF channel to catch most places round the county when 'Globull' television on 29 in Sarnia/Oil Springs isn't overpowering it. All my Toledo channels are 2Edge diffraction where you may have 'LOS'. The Ruthven area 150+ foot ridge is blocking me to the W-S.

As for NBC and FOX in Toledo. They both use those stupid heavy nulls in our direction. Only about half of WUPW's (http://www.fcc.gov/fcc-bin/polarplot?frame=Y&temp=40304&rotate=0.00&p0=0.588&p10=0.437&p20=0.302&p30=0.218&p40=0.207&p50=0.232&p60=0.245&p70=0.232&p80=0.207&p90=0.218&p100=0.302&p110=0.437&p120=0.588&p130=0.733&p140=0.854&p150=0.940&p160=0.987&p170=1.000&p180=0.988&p190=0.963&p200=0.936&p210=0.917&p220=0.905&p230=0.900&p240=0.899&p250=0.900&p260=0.905&p270=0.917&p280=0.936&p290=0.963&p300=0.988&p310=1.000&p320=0.987&p330=0.940&p340=0.854&p350=0.733&p360=0.588&) original 110kW signal is sent towards Windsor and even less towards me. WNWO (http://www.fcc.gov/fcc-bin/polarplot?frame=Y&temp=42576&rotate=0.00&p0=0.392&p10=0.280&p20=0.197&p30=0.184&p40=0.226&p50=0.257&p60=0.227&p70=0.183&p80=0.194&p90=0.278&p100=0.393&p110=0.502&p120=0.599&p130=0.688&p140=0.778&p150=0.873&p160=0.951&p170=0.993&p177=1.000&p180=0.998&p190=0.976&p200=0.944&p210=0.918&p220=0.901&p230=0.895&p240=0.908&p250=0.921&p260=0.942&p270=0.974&p280=0.995&p290=0.985&p300=0.940&p310=0.865&p320=0.775&p330=0.684&p340=0.593&p350=0.497&p360=0.392&) sends more like 30% of the total 59kW ERP towards us too. Things might even get worse in the spring and summer when WDLI will move to ch49 where WNWO-DT resides and will obliterate it most nights with its powerful 900kw in our direction compared to WNWO's puny nulled signal.

Too bad Industry Canada didn't complain about that one too. I hope the FCC gets many complaints from NBC viewers in nw Ohio about signal issues. WDLI and WNWO contours will actually overlap in the Norwalk, OH area! This would have never been possible in analog without severe venechian blind co-channel effects.

@ goforit

Your lucky! Trying to get *reliable* reception at a distance of 70+ miles from a tower at the same elevation as you is near impossible.

The Detroit area channels are at full power but differ greatly in site elevation vs Buffalo's. Our area towers are at almost the same elevation of which most of the entire region is at (Flat land). LOS is lost after 55 or so miles from the typical 300m/1000ft high tower with no obstructions. Your area's signals are on much higher land elevation. Example: Elevation at the base of the WIVB tower is 500m and WKBW is 529m above sea level, WGRZ being one of your weaker channels even beats all of us down here at 412m. The Detroit area towers all average near the same elevation of around 202 meters since they are all close to each other in Southfield, MI. Toledo's towers are even worse averaging only 177m ASL.

Thanks for the info..... Do you pickup WUPW at all? I'm trying to get another FOX station for more hi-def football games on the weekends. I have WTOL right now, so I get 2 CBS channels which is nice. I experienced a bit of tropo this summer picking up a few odd channels with my 4-bay.

What kind of antenna setup are you running RingtailedFox?
no, i don't pick it up, but i do get a partial lock on it.

My dad's using some no-name brand four-bay UHF-only antenna mounted on the roof with a wineguard preamp, but he's getting frustrated with it dropping signals, and is now considering my offer to shove a ChannelMaster in the attic (though telling him getting the networks from toledo as a bonus helps too!).

the only toledo and clevenad stations i recieved so far were WEWS-DT WGTE-DT, and that was via tropo skip during the Summer of Skip :P

I've managed to recieve PARTIAL locks on these digital stations:
WTOL-DT 11 (CBS Toledo)
WJRT-DT 12 (ABC Flint)
WTVG-DT 13 (ABC Toledo)
WEWS-DT 15 (ABC Cleveland) (recieved briefly from tropo, partial locks most of the time)
WKYC-DT 17 (NBC Cleveland) (may have been from tropo, partial locks most of the time)
WFUM-DT 28 (PBS Flint) (might be blocked out by WUAB-DT also on 28... but i doubt that)
WEYI-DT 30 (NBC Flint)
WGTE-DT 31 (PBS Toledo) (recieved briefly from tropo, partial locks most of the time)
WLNS-DT 36 (CBS Lansing)
WSYM-DT 38 (FOX Lansing)
WUPW-DT 46 (FOX Toledo) (could also be WBSF-DT on 46.. The CW Flint)
WNWO-DT 49 (NBC Toledo)

the antenna's obviously garbage for any realistic long-distance reception...

goforit... most of the detroit stations are operating at close to full power for digital stations (1 MW)... i think it's just my antenna being weak. my lineup would rock so hard if i could pull these ones in on a regular basis...

as for elevations...

Windsor is at 685 feet above sea level (but if Al Gore's right, i'll have "beachfront property" in 50 years! :P), while Woodstock is around 984 above sea level... i'd assume Kitchener and area are around 1000 feet above sea level

let's not forget that buffalo's pretty hilly, due to the "Boston Hills" near it... that's the northwestern most fringe of the Appalachian Mountains.. very close to Lake Erie, too...

Where are you located Ringtaledfox??? I'd kill for some of those stations - like the Flint CBS/FOX...

But anyways today I completed my roof install. I now have the AntennaCraft HBU33 combo vhf-hi/uhf mounted on a tripod, going through an antennacraft 10G201 preamp that gives 16db vhf / 22dbuhf gain. Also installed the CM 9521 Rotor, which so far seems to be working well. I managed to find a sweet spot, when pointing between Toledo and Detroit around 230-240 degrees azimuth, I can pickup and lock on to all the channels I talked about in post #859 of this thread.
From Toledo I'm getting pretty much everything except that damn WUPW Fox. If I point right at it, I get a partial lock where i can't get a solid picture. Interestingly WNWO NBC 24-1 is as solid as ever and has about the same weak signal according to my Tvfool says. Must be because the signal isn't as strong in this direction from what someone said a few posts before.

But all in all after a hard days work I'm extremely satisfied, all channels I had before and a few extra are solid :) Can even spin it around and point northeast and get Global and CTV clear as a bell.

i'm in a very bad spot for TV reception, actually. i'm located about 2 miles east of the ambassador bridge, and 2 miles west of downtown Detroit/Windsor. it's ghosting HELL here for analog signals, and even WDIV-DT (45) drops out now and then from all the multipath, thanks to the office towers of downtown Detroit. I have a small (10 foot) hill just north of me, a couple apartment houses, a 45 kV high-tension powerline about 900 feet south of me, and my only clear views (not obstructed by trees or homes) are to the SW and W (towards toledo and lansing). this doesn't includ the small arena about 200 feet NW of my house, or the gothic cathedral about 1200 feet W of me.

WNWO-DT has a null becuase its signal would bleed over into detroit and windsor too much, thus annoying WDIV... so, the FCC had a null put in, though i'm sure the CRTC had a hand in this, too.

You won't be getting CBS Flint (WNEM-DT 5.1) in the windsor area, becuase it's co-channel with CIII-TV-22 from Leamington, or FOX Flint, since WSMH-DT 66.1 is co-channel to CHWI-TV (both on 16).

Like i said.. WUPW-DT might be experiencing too much co-chanel interference from WBSF-DT (both on 46) in the windsor area, which is both channels' deep fringe area, to allow for any reception. it's great that you get Global and CKCO pretty clear... though global's sarnia transmitter is on 29 - cochannel with WGTE-DT... i've seen a few times where i've lost PBS Toledo to global... and CKCO might have to convert to digital on 42, because their current allocation (27) is co-channel to WBGU-DT (PBS Bowling Green/Toledo), which may be too far south for windsor-area reception, it still may cause interference.

If an attic installation gets me ABC-NBC-CBS-PBS toledo, that's good enough for me. anything beyond that's just a bonus that i'd be more than glad to have, too.

How much did your install run you in terms of costs? i want to know what type of expenditure i have to face before i plunk down any of my hard-earned money.

Hi Windsor folks. I was wondering if anyone out there is using a pre-amp and if so if it kills reception for Detroit channels. From what I've read a pre-amp might not be a good idea for Windsor but I'm looking for some real world experiences. If you are using could you please post the model?
Thanks

davage, London is much too far from toronto for reception of their signals, bout they may occasionally float in on tropo skip. i'd say the realistic limit of the buffalo and toronto stations is around the kitchener area if you have ultra-deep-fringe equipment. london has better luck with Cleveland and Erie, but again... unreliable.

snoopd520000, a pre-amp might overload some of the detroit stations becuase they're just so strong around here, but they might be alright if you're in the south end of La Salle towards River Canard. It would definitely boost the Toledo signals (11, 13, 29, 49) for you.

The only downside to putting up equipment right now is that cool air is prevailing and that tends to kill signals over long distances, while warm air energizes them and allows them to travel very far (which is why summertime is great for skip, while wintertime allows you to measure what signals you get concretely on a year-round basis).

Hi Windsor folks. I was wondering if anyone out there is using a pre-amp and if so if it kills reception for Detroit channels. From what I've read a pre-amp might not be a good idea for Windsor but I'm looking for some real world experiences. If you are using could you please post the model?
Thanks
See my post on this page - #877. Pre-amps come in various levels of gain from what I've seen. I am by no chance an expert, but from what I've seen if you are in an area where you have both - 1- strong local singals 2- weaker distant fringe signals - you want to use a pre-amp that is of moderate strength. That is the case here in Windsor as we have both types of signals.

I'm using an antennacraft 10G201 model which gives 16db vhf / 22db uhf gain. Immediately when installing it, it did exactly what I wanted. It made the local strong signals the same or better, and more importantly made my weak fringe singals stronger. Antennacraft makes another model that kicks out 29db gain that is more intended for use where you are in an area where all signals are weak. From what I read if you use an amp like that in an area with both types of mixed signals it can degrade the signal of your local strong stations.

I was going to test with one of these amps to specifically pull in a few weak signals that i'd like to get. Not sure it there is maybe a switch i could setup where i could switch between amps.... might be a hard thing to setup. But anyways, yeah all manufacturers make a different array of amps with different levels of gain, too much gain is no good in Windsor IMO because of our close proximity to detroit.

@ Ringtailedfox

In regards to WBSF interfering with the signal for WUPW... Yeah they are both on UHF 46 now that i check. But have you ever looked at Tvfool's coverage maps? I was looking at the one for Lansing today which contains WBSF's coverage area.... and according to it, WBSF's signal does not even reach metro Detroit. The purple area of the signal is in the outskirts of Detroit so nowhere even near Windsor. Do you really think that signal is competing with WUPW's from Toledo? I'm thinking it isn't. I messed around a bit tonight and was able to get partial lock on WUPW, but not enough to get a full picture. I think with the winter months coming that won't get any easier, but more then likely will appear next summer with the hotter temps and tropo weather.

My complete system cost approx $350. That includes my HBU33 antenna, 5' tripod, antennacraft preamp, CM 9521 rotor, 100' of rotor wire and some odds and ends like a mast pipe. I pieced everything together wherever i could find cheaper deals. Electrozad supply on Jefferson recently started carring the Channelmaster line of products, cheapest price i have seen locally for the rotor. Seen it cheaper online but with shipping and brokerage fees it wouldn't be cheaper. I already had extra coax ran to the roof from my dish so that was already done... and I already had all the crimping tools, etc... very happy so far.

nice! I'll check out Electrozad and Western Electronics on Rhodes Drive, to compare who has better equipment and better prices, but they seem about even with the estimate that Western Equipment gave me...