ON - Barrie, Muskoka, Sault Ste. Marie, Northern Ontario - OTA

[rob50312]

First check tv fool to see whats possible by entering your exact address.You will need an ASTC tuner box.I suspect you you can get Global on 7 Midland ,CFTO and CHCH on 23 from North of Orillia and maybe CKVR on 10 from Barrie.You will need a VHF antenna if want to try for CKVR.Any good combo antenna would be a good start.NO CBC or TVO anymore.

[reezer]

I built a SBGH antenna, it's on 20ft outside pole. I live in Oro Station near the lake between line 6 and 7. This is what I get

2.1 wgrz- pretty solid, momentary hiccups
3.1 ctv2- solid
5.1 cbc- solid
4.1 cbs- occasionally at night
9.1 ctv -momentary hiccups
19.1 tvo- solid
23.1 cw- solid
29.1 fox- occasionally at night
40.1 omni- solid
41.1 global- solid
47.1 cfmt- solid
57.1 city- solid
69.1 omni- solid at night

that's on a new lg 50" plasma tv

I'm hoping to get a real tower and make a DBGH and pickup some more buffalo channels. Overall, though, I'm pretty surprised at how good the antenna performs. Definately, better than I expected. I was only counting on CN tower channels

[va3saj]

Hi Reezer:

I'm a little bit south of you (in the City of Barrie), and I put an AntennaDirect91XG on a DMX-68 tower and got quite a bit with it:

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/show...&postcount=536

Looking over that, and what you got, a couple of ideas:

I'm positive you could also get CHCH-TV Hamilton, as they have a right next door Muskoka relay CHCHTV3 on Channel 67 (Real Channel 23); swing around your antenna to the North and it will be there.

If you swing it east, you'll definitely get a better CFTO than Channel 9 out of Toronto. CFTO-TV54 out of Peterborough is on channel 35, and it is strong here in Barrie; for you in Oro, no problem, and much better (more reliable) than 9.

There's a Midland, Ontario Global TV repeater (North) that booms in here too....CIII-1, Channel 7. An easy catch, much better than Toronto's Channel 41 Global.

Try for Channel 25, CBLFT-TV, CBC French it's right out of Toronto, rock solid for me, always, even before I had the tower.

You're not getting any PBS, WNED Channel 17 (Real Channel 43) is lower powered than many of your Buffalo Channels. I get it pretty reliably in the evenings off the tower, but you know what? This is really weird, but often if I swing the antenna Southeast instead of South I sometimes get WXXI PBS Channel 21 (Real Channel 16) out of Rochester instead! I don't think it's tropo, as it's semi-regular; if WNED Buffalo is lousy or not coming in, I'll swing it around and often Rochester is there. Go figure, OTA TV is unpredictable sometimes.

There's a couple of other Buffalo Channels to shoot for...I find WNYO TV Channel 49 pretty strong up here (better than WNED 17 or WUTV 29) so they're possibly in your grasp. Channel 26 WNYB is actually 4 channels in one, but its in Jamestown, so even though it is super-powered, its one of the harder ones for me. The ABC Affiliate in Buffalo, WKBW, Channel 7 (Real Channel 38) ought to be possible too for you.

If you are still interested in old-style analog TV signals, there's still about a dozen of them in the Barrie area...my old combo VHF/FM/UHF Combo Winegard HD8200U is better on most of these, they go from Sudbury retransmitters to Orillia to Huntsville to Peterborough to Penetanguishene to Wiarton. See my post above if you're interested in getting these, they should be no trouble.

Good luck!

VA3SAJ

[reezer]

I have got most of those channels if I turn the antenna. However, I don't have a rotor yet so I usually just leave it pointed in one direction. I'm kind of lucky because most of the CN tower and buffalo channels are within 10 degrees of each other, so I just leave it pointed in the middle for now. I see a million old towers around this area and I could get them for free but the problem is getting them down off the house safely without any damage.

[va3saj]

Hi Reezer:

I'm in the same boat as you, Buffalo and Toronto are in the same direction for me so I usually just park the tower rotor southwards for TV and FM, turning it when I want something else. There are a lot of old towers around here too, but let me tell you, NEVER screw around with old towers, they'll kill you if you don't know what you're doing, get a professional to do the work, and save your skin.

There's hardly any Tower people still installing up here in the Barrie area, most companies have quit the business. I got Kelly's TV Towers in Barrie here to put up my (new) DMX-68 here, they are at 3263 Dobson Road in Barrie, at 705-726-6695. The installers did good work for me, put up the tower/tv antenna plus the ham radio antennas too, and made sure it was all safely grounded and working before they left. They sell used towers too fairly cheaply (which is a lot safer; they have a chance to look them over on the ground before they climb all over them and build them up to the sky....an old tower on someone's house that you get for free, who knows? One rusty bolt, and the whole thing comes crashing down, with you on top of it).

Good luck, and let us know how it goes. I myself am curious if a homebrew SBGH or DBGH (that you are making) will outperform a professionally built AntennasDirect91XG. The TV installers here swear by the Channel Master antennas (like the CM4228), but they like the Winegard models too (I have a Winegard HD8200 for the VHF channels still operating around here). I'm in a bit of a valley here (I live right on the south shore of Lake Simcoe) so that doesn't help; you're a bit more elevated than I am, which is likely a big advantage, even though you are further away from Toronto/Buffalo. I suppose the only way to know for sure would be to put them both on the same tower and see for myself....over in the antenna research forum they do all kinds of crazy hacks with numerous gain figures/graphs, but you know what? None of that matters much in real life if you're in the wrong place (like a valley down by the lake lol).

VA3SAJ

[DiverRick]

I'm trying to help a friend convert to digital at his cottage in the Muskokas. He has a 40' antenna up with a rotor and one of the old traditional antenna heads. Can he just plug in a digital TV and use what's there?

Should be get a new antenna? (what type?) or start from scratch with a new Digital Antenna & mount? Omni directional? or ??

I don't want to give him any bad advice.

Any help appreciated. I ran a "TV Fool" report and saved it, but am not sure what to do with it!

thnx

[va3saj]

Hi DiverRick:

Probably the best thing to do is to attach the TVFool report to a posting here so the seasoned "digital dogs" here can have a look at it and see what is possible for him....the ""Muskokas" is a huge area, ranging from nothing at all to a whole rack of channels. I (arguably) live at the southern edge of "cottage country" Barrie and my reception is pretty good...mind you, I needed to put up a huge TV tower with an extreme DX antenna/preamplifier to do it:

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/show...&postcount=536

About your friend's case...well the 40 foot tower should bring in something! I should think that some of the Toronto channels would be possible, definitely Barrie's CKVR (Channel 3), probably Muskoka's relays of CHCH and CIII (Global) on Channel 67 and 7; maybe some relays out of North Bay/Sudbury, I got the analog versions of these from Huntsville. Peterborough's CHEX (analog Channel 12) and CTV Relay CFTODT54 (Channel 35) may be in reach too. There's an analog CFTO Relay in Orillia too on Channel 21. Definitely plug in a TV and have a go, see what you get. Use the rotor and do a few scans...South, East, North, West, that sort of thing. You didn't say what the antenna was up there ("an old traditional antenna head"?) Do you mean an old-style VHF antenna, perhaps? Or a Combo UHF/VHF aerial? One of my aerials is a VHF/UHF Combo, it looks like this:

http://www.tvantenna.com/products/tv...HD-8200P-2.jpg

If he has anything like that, great. There's no difference between an "analog" antenna and a "digital" one, they both work fine; people who tell you otherwise are scamming you, in the main. Now, that being said, it is true that today's digital TV is mainly on the UHF part of the band spectra, whereas yesterday's analog TV was mainly VHF (in cottage country, anyway). So if he has a UHF antenna up there, even better. Here is one of mine:

http://www.antennasdirect.com/store/images/P/91xg.jpg

Reception has been strange lately....some tropo reception, signals from Erie and Rochester coming in at night. But do any of the people here know what's going on? Last night I was astonished to get CIII Channel 7 from Midland on my 91XG (which is a UHF antenna, not a VHF one...what's up with that?) Normally I get it on my VHF/UHF Combo Winegard HD8200....I never got it on my 91XG before. And here's the weirdest thing...I picked up CFTO-TV Channel 9 on the 91XG, but I was pointing it Eastward at the time, not South towards Toronto....when I rotated the antenna South, it dropped out. I thought...is that really CFTO, or something else east of me? A quick check of Channel 35, it's the same as CFTODT54 out of Peterborough, so yeah, it's definitely CFTO....so what's it doing on a UHF Antenna pointing the wrong way? Has CFTO activated some rebroadcaster on Channel 9 East of the GTA, perhaps?

Good luck with your friend's tower!

VA3SAJ

[tvlurker]

VA3SAJ,

with respect to getting channel 9 off-axis on a UHF antenna, don't forget that the best reception of out-of-band channels on an antenna is not necessarily going to be in the same direction as in-band channels.

So it's quite possible that channel 9 will come in off-axis on a UHF antenna, but not come in on-axis.

[DiverRick]

Thanks for all the info! Yes, his is the combo vhf/uhf antenna & also a working rotar, so I guess its worth a try first to see what he gets with it. He has a pretty clear view looking south, s/e & s/w from his cottage. Trees most of the other directions.

He has an old analog tv hooked up now, and added a digital converter box last year, and is happy with the channel selection he currently has, but just wants to switch to digital TV.

Hooking up the new HDTV tomorrow, so we'll see what happens.

If he doesn't get the channels he "should" get for his location, what do we do first:
- inline signal "booster" of some kind?
- re-wire with better quality coax to replace whatever is still up there?
- new digital UHF head?

Thanks again!

Here's the TVFool link: (did it right down to his Lat & lon)

http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wr...9900b12e56c46a

[va3saj]

Hi DiverRick:

The TVFool looks pretty good...not all that different from mine (though I'm a good bit closer to Toronto/Buffalo, so those channels are obviously stronger/easier for me). Most of what I thought you'd get is on the TVFool report you attached...but notice that almost all the true "digital" channels (mainly from Toronto) are way down in the Grey (of which TV Fool sayeth, "These channels are very weak and will most likely require extreme measures to try and pick them up").

So: how extreme do you wanna go? I do want to address what he "should" get...TVFool is a rough approximation of reality, it isn't definitive, as transmitters are being added/changed all the time. According to my TV Fool report, I should get WHEC from Rochester better than Buffalo's WKBW, WUTV, WNED or WNYO, which is obviously crap...the Buffalo channels are all regular visitors in the evening (I have WNYO on right now, the Cool TV), and I've never seen WHEC from Rochester, on either antenna, the Winegard HD8200 or the AntennasDirect91XG. So it's a rough guide at best. Looking at it, I notice a lot of the analog relays I used to get last year are now gone and no longer transmitting, so they'll be off your list...pretty soon, they'll all be gone and it will be digital only. That's not a problem, by the way...he already has the set top box, as I do...my Tivax set top box justs runs everything digital into an old analog Telefunken CRT, and that's fine, TV is a sideline for me, I really got the tower for FM and Ham Radio. But yeah, in HD it would be much prettier, and I think we'll have to make a bit more effort.

What I'd suggest (others please chime in!)...if the Combo VHF/UHF antenna has been up there for years, yeah, possibly the coax cable needs replacing, and that's cheap to do. If its a really old install, maybe you have worn out cable (300 ohm maybe for VHF? Wow, thats so old school, I remember those days, we still use ladder line cable for some ham radio antennas). Go with the highest quality coax you can, you don't want to skimp here. RG6 definitely, maybe Quad Shield LOL....even I don't have that, it's overkill they say. They debate all that stuff on here, and sometimes the cable guys themselves chime in:

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=104308

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=21272

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=93738

What I did was add a preamp to my antenna, that made a huge difference, I got a lot of Buffalo channels I couldn't get before. For a distant fringe area like yours, I'd add a preamp like the Channel Master 7777 or 7778 (I use a CM 7777 Titan 2). It will be about $100 or so. You can get them through SaveandReplay, the forum sponsor, which is where I got my stuff. I got all my TV equipment there except for the tower, of course, which is a Wade-Delhi 68 footer:

http://overtheair.saveandreplay.com/OTA_PreAmps.asp

If that still doesn't work, then think about adding another Deep Fringe UHF antenna, like my AntennasDirect91XG, which SaveandReplay has here. Again, that would be another hundred bucks or so:

http://overtheair.saveandreplay.com/...irect_91XG.asp

Or you could go with something like this, a lot of deep fringe people way up here use these:

http://overtheair.saveandreplay.com/...ter_4228HD.asp

Now if you want to go all out, pull out that tower and put up a taller one (more height is almost always better!), and lift the whole darn shebang of DX Fringe antennas and preamps way up high into the sky, as high as you can go. Hang out in the antennas forum here, those guys roll/build fancy antennas to squeeze the last tiny microvolts out of a signal, better than what the Commercial Antennas can do. But a monster tower like this will set you back a few thousand dollars, so do it only if cost is no object:

http://www.wade-antenna.com/Wade/DMX.htm

The guy at Kelly's TV Towers here in Barrie sold me a DMX-68, with mast, so everything's up about 70-75 feet, which is a huge improvement on my Winegard HD8200, which is on a roof bracket about 30 feet up. That was as high as I dared to go in a city subdivision, but the installers have done self-standing and guyed towers like the Delhi-Wade up to a staggering 150 feet (wow...if I had that, I could probably pick up a cat Purring in Pittsburgh!). But again, it would cost a small fortune, so start with the preamp/best coax you can get, I think. Good luck!

VA3SAJ

[va3saj]

Hi tvlurker:

Thanks, I suppose that's true...I just find it downright "weird" that Channel 9 CFTO would only come in when the antenna was perpendicular to its proper orientation....my Winegard HD8200 was pointed South, as it was supposed to be, and was getting CFTO no problems. The 91XG is super directional...turn it only 10-15 degrees, and the signal drops off and dies...on the other hand, it's great at picking up really distant signals (like Buffalo). So I was surprised to see CFTO rolling in out of the East....what's up with that? Was there an earthquake, and Barrie shifted down to Mississauga or something? I'll have a look over the next few days and see if it was a one-off...after all I get it reliably on the Winegard, and it's always easiest of all to get CFTO with my 91XG from the Peterborough relay CFTODT54.

VA3SAJ

[tvlurker]

va3saj -- one way to know for sure about the 91XG's antenna pattern for channel 9 would be to model it using a software antenna modelling tool. It's possible that the boom is picking up channel 9 and re-radiating it to the feedline or the UHF active element.

Check out the R&D section -- perhaps someone had modelled this antenna for VHF-high already.

[va3saj]

Hi tvlurker:

Yes, I suppose that's possible. I tried again for a few evenings while I was scanning the bands...I thought, what the heck, let's point it East and see if CFTO comes back up again. No luck. So it was a one-off, after all. Not that it's a big deal; the 91XG gets CFTO54 Channel 35 out of Peterborough rock solid, no problems, all the time; and there's always the analog relay out of Orillia, Channel 21, which is also clear here in Barrie.

You really need a proper VHF antenna for the lower channels. Fortunately, I have an HD8200 at 30 feet, and it gets CFTO TV 9 out of Toronto; so I can always watch it from there, I suppose.

Thanks for your suggestion...I know the Antenna forum has a lot of posts about the 91XG, so I'll see what work they've already done.

VA3SAJ

[Trad2005]

Hello,
please help. I'm a newbie at this OTA thing. I picked up a CANT1400 Multidirectional Indoor Antenna by RCA. I hooked up to my Samsung LCD and did a scan. To no avail, haven't been able to access anything. Am I missing something?

I'm from Innisfil, ON. TV Fool gives me the following:
http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wr...e779fa63966744

Appreciate your help!

[va3saj]

Hi Trad2005:

I had a look at your TV Fool and it looks pretty much like mine (which is no surprise, as I live right next door to you, in Barrie). I get a few dozen channels, but I'm using an extreme fringe antenna on top of a 75 foot TV Tower. My results are here:

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/show...&postcount=536

Now you hooked up an RCA CANT1400 Indoor antenna? I'm assuming something like this?

http://www.shopxscargo.com/product_c...ry=Accessories

First thing: the nearest HD channels to us are CKVR (Channel 3, Real Channel 10) in Barrie and CIII in Midland (Channel 7 Real Channel 7). Even a coathanger in Barrie/Innisfil ought to get CKVR, so I'm thinking your house is "shielding" signals from the outside. Take that indoor antenna and try taping it to a window (maybe the one facing Barrie, west of you). Or better yet, try attaching it just outside the window, on the exterior wall, just to see if it is working. If you still get nothing, check the coax/connectors, something is definitely wrong. If you start getting the locals (CTV2 Barrie, Global Midland, maybe CTV Analog 21 Orillia) then you know your set-up is working and you can start thinking about a better antenna (exterior, as high up as you can get it, on a tower is best, or at least on your roof). That should bring in the Toronto Channels (CBC, CTV, TVOntario, CBC-French, Global, Omni, and all that). If you want to go all out on a tower, then you'll start getting the Buffalo channels (which is sweet, as many of them are multiple channels in one...you get, say WGRZ-TV 2 NBC Buffalo, and you get an added second channel that comes along with it, WGRZ-AT Antenna TV, which shows retro programs). The easiest Buffalo channel to get is WNLO (The CW, Channel 23, Real Channel 32); the easiest Toronto channel to get is CBLT (CBC: Channel 5, Real Channel 20). Good luck, and keep us posted!

VA3SAJ