Philco head-scratcher--UHF stations without converter on VHF-only TV?

[Jeffhs]

While reading the thread "'63 Philco" in this forum, I happened to remember something I had read in the old Electronics Illustrated magazine, I think it was late '60s-early '70s. This magazine had a column written by Tom Kneitel, K2AES--a smart-aleck question-and-answer man if I ever saw one, and I read his column in EI for years. Sometimes he'd give a straight answer to readers' questions; however, much of the time he answered questions with remarks he thought were funny, but seldom addressed the issue at hand. Anyway, I remember one question to him from a fellow in Revere, Massachusetts, near Boston, who said his 1963 VHF-only Philco color TV was receiving two Boston UHF stations, using rabbit ears. The local TV serviceman, and apparently the technicians at several other local TV shops, couldn't tell him why; wouldn't even guess. Kneitel answered: "Probably because they don't know."

I got a good laugh from that and never forgot it; should have kept the magazine for old times' sake. However, I'm wondering about the 1963 Philco mentioned above. Is it actually possible, seriously, for a VHF-only television set not using a converter to receive UHF stations, say by extremely strong-signal overload or some other unusual condition?

[colorfixer]

Really severe RF front end overload in the first RF amp and mixer in the tuner?
or
First LO in the tuner being full of harmonics, and combined with high signal strength of the UHF station allowing the tuner's mixer to convert the UHF to the receiver's IF by some miraculous fluke?

[Pete Deksnis]

Originally Posted by Jeffhs

While reading the thread "'63 Philco" in this forum, I happened to remember something I had read in the old Electronics Illustrated magazine, I think it was late '60s-early '70s. This magazine had a column written by Tom Kneitel, K2AES--a smart-aleck question-and-answer man if I ever saw one, and I read his column in EI for years. Sometimes he'd give a straight answer to readers' questions; however, much of the time he answered questions with remarks he thought were funny, but seldom addressed the issue at hand.

Most of you know I edited electronics hobby magazines in the seventies. Letters-to-the-Editor columns were very popular and religiously read by high percentage of subscribers; so much so that their content was not always left to the vagaries of actual letters to the Editor! They were professionally written, with only the occasional reader's letter making it to the magazine page unscathed. Guys like Kneitel and Friedman (bet u never heard of him) were some of the wordsmiths involved in your Letters-to-the-Editor reading pleasure.

Pete

[cbenham]

Is it possible that:
1. There could have been VHF translaters in use where the set was located? [not likely, I suppose]

2. The set's tuner came with UHF 'strips' installed in place of two unused VHF channels? Was that still being done in 1963? Wasn't it just in 1961 that the 'All-Channel Receiver Act' was passed by Congress?

Knowing how close the set was to the two UHF transmitters would
help answer the question too.

[andy]

---

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by cbenham

Is it possible that:
1. There could have been VHF translaters in use where the set was located? [not likely, I suppose]

2. The set's tuner came with UHF 'strips' installed in place of two unused VHF channels? Was that still being done in 1963? Wasn't it just in 1961 that the 'All-Channel Receiver Act' was passed by Congress?

Knowing how close the set was to the two UHF transmitters would
help answer the question too.

The translator theory makes sense but, like yourself, I don't think there were any UHF-to-VHF television translators near the TV in question.

I'm not sure whether or if Philco used UHF strips to convert their VHF-only TVs to receive UHF stations. This system was used exclusively by Zenith in the 1950s-'60s to allow its VHF-only sets to receive the then-new UHF stations; it wouldn't surprise me if they had a patent on it as well. If there were any generic after-market UHF conversion kits using strips to replace unused VHF strips in the tuner, I never saw them advertised anywhere.

The most VHF TV stations any city can have is seven, which would leave five unused strips; but most cities except New York and Los Angeles have far fewer stations, so most folks had sets with several unused channels--in the Cleveland area, only having channels 3, 5 and 8, for example, this would leave nine unused positions that could be replaced by UHF strips, not that Cleveland would ever have that many UHF channels. The area didn't get its first UHF station, PBS [then known as NET] affiliate WVIZ channel 25, until 1965; the first commercial UHF station was WUAB channel 43 in suburban Lorain, which went on the air in 1968 as an independent and is now the northeastern Ohio affiliate of the MyTV network. Channel 61 followed later the same year, followed by WBNX-channel 55 in 1985; 61 is now a Univision affiliate and 55 is the local affiliate of The CW network, after starts as independent stations, although 61 (now known as WCLQ-TV) was an affiliate of a short-lived over-the-air pay-TV network in the early eighties and also carried HSN home-shopping programming (as WQHS) from the mid-eighties until 1990 or so, when HSN went exclusively to cable. WQHS dropped HSN for Univision some time in the '90s.

The all-channel reception law went into effect on April 30, 1964; all new TVs manufactured and sold in the US were required to have both VHF and UHF tuners after that date. VHF-only receivers made before 1964 could be converted by means of a UHF-to-VHF converter box (the first of which, IIRC, was the Blonder-Tongue BTX-99 using a 6AF4 UHF oscillator and 6BZ6 IF amp) ahead of the TV's own tuner.

I did a search on Google for Revere, Massachusetts and found that the city is five miles from downtown Boston. I don't know where the Boston TV transmitters were located. I seriously doubt that the transmitters were actually in Revere; they may well have been in a city or semi-rural area of high elevation 20-30 miles from the downtown Boston area, much as the TV transmitters serving my area near Cleveland are located in a southwestern suburb called Parma, 35 miles or so from where I live. (Channel 3, the NBC affiliate for northeastern Ohio, may as well be 100 miles away since it doesn't even reach here and is unwatchable without cable or satellite, though 5, 8 and the eight or so local UHF stations, one of which, channel 19, is the CBS affiliate for this area, come in on an antenna just fine.) Some cities such as Chicago and New York actually have the transmitters for their major TV and FM stations located in the downtown area of the city itself, which, IMO, seems to me like it would be a setup for a heck of an interference problem between stations whose antennas were on the same tower, not to mention the interference from pager transmitters, cellular towers, etc. I really cannot imagine how four or more stations with antennas on the same tower (as in New York, Chicago, Detroit and possibly other very large cities) can operate at full power without tearing up each others' signals. The TV and radio stations serving the Cleveland area, on the other hand, are located in a suburb (actually, a couple of suburbs) some 15 miles from downtown; the towers are spread out so that they cannot possibly interfere with each other.

Pete Dexnis: I didn't know that the Q&A columns in electronics magazines such as Electronics Illustrated may have been (and probably were) professionally written, with the letters from readers being edited extensively or even made up by the column's conductor. This makes sense, however, because the whole business about a VHF-only TV set receiving UHF stations on rabbit ears (not using a UHF converter ahead of the set's VHF tuner) sounds incredible; in fact, given the manner in which VHF-only TV sets operate (receiving only channels 2 through 13), this sort of thing should be all but impossible, unless the set were located extremely close to the two UHF stations in question and was being overloaded to the point of saturation or worse--which, given the TV's location in suburban Boston, is not likely.

Very strong RF signals can cause TV sets and other electronic devices to behave in unexpected and downright bizarre ways. I once heard of someone who lived so close to a powerful local AM radio station that the person was, believe it or not, somehow hearing that station on his electric stove; there have also been reports of people hearing strong radio signals through their teeth, by means of braces or fillings acting as detectors, rectifying the strong signal. This only works, however, if the person is extremely close to the offending station's tower, say a few hundred yards or less. There was an episode of the '70s comedy series The Partridge Family in which Laurie (played by actress Susan Dey) was hearing a local radio station in her head for the longest time, until it was discovered by her dentist that the braces he had put on her teeth were picking up the signal from that station. . . . Oh well, that's one way to have your local radio station with you 24/7; the problem is you can't shut it off, and if the station is programmed in a format you don't care for, it can be downright annoying.

I wouldn't be surprised if Tom Kneitel made up that particular letter (about the person getting his area's two local UHF TV stations on a VHF-only TV) just to be funny, but then again that was the nature of his column, which was titled Uncle Tom's Corner and appeared in Electronics Illustrated magazine from the early sixties until the magazine folded some time in the seventies. Kneitel had a great sense of humor, but I would think at least twice before taking his material seriously.

I do remember a writer named Herb Friedman, whose articles appeared in several electronics magazines of the '60s-'70s. He was an amateur radio operator as well (W2ZLF), but I don't recall ever seeing a Q&A column written by him in any of the major hobby magazines of that period.

[bgadow]

I have a big stack of "S9" magazines that I've saved just for Kneitel's writing. Any kin to "Ask Joe Gutts?"

I have a Predicta which has homemade labels affixed saying something like "6 for 23, 8 for 42" which I have assumed meant it had strips. (I can't recall the actual channels offhand, though I did research it once and guess that it might have come from western PA originally) I also have an Emerson from about '53 with a strip for local channel 16-works well. Somewhere I have a mayonaise jar full of ch.16 strips for a Zenith.

[kbmuri]

FWIW -- UHF reception on VHF channel:
http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/sho...05#post1505005
I'm comfortably 12 miles from the transmitter.
The really old sets didn't have much protection against UHF stations, switching power supplies, microwave ovens, cellphones, PC's. None of those things existed yet.

[Richard D]

As far as four or more towers on one building, back in the 1970's I worked for the first top 40 FM station in the Miami Fl. area and we would go off the air Sunday nights from 2:00 am to 5 AM for transmitter maintinence and our antenna was at the antenna farm at the Dade/Broward county line and got to ride in the elevator to our radiaiting element level at 1,215 feet and the engineer told me that he had made sure that WLYF was off the air. When I asked him why he told me that we (WMYQ) and WLYF shared the same radiating element. I thought he was kidding but nope. BTW we advertised 100,000 watts of radiated power yet the transmitter input meter was always at 19.5 KW. Antenna gain? I was 18 and I wish I had a camera with me.

[old_tv_nut]

Putting all the transmitters at the same location is generally best for receivers, since they can more easily sort out many equal signals without the weak ones being distorted by the presence of stronger ones. The situation in Chicago is near ideal, with the exception that people downtown may need some attenuation on the input to make the overall level reasonable. Actually, some of the stations are on the Hancock building, and some on Sears (nost of digital TV on sears, but not all), and one of our favorite test sites in the past has been the Grant Park-facing apartment of a former employee who has line-of-sight to Sears and only reflected signals from Hancock.

Co-location where possible is one of the things that has made it possible to fire up digital TV transmitters duplicating the analog service without killing analog reception in the meantime. Many stations during this transition period are transmitting digital from the same tower as their analog signal, even on the adjacent channel.

Non-co-located sources can be a pain - you can experience an increase in interference almost without limit by being close to the interferor. This sort of thing has happened in the past for example with FM stations that are not co-located with the TV stations. This is most commonly a channel 6 problem, but when my Uncle got one of the first transistor TVs and lived near WMBI-FM, he even had trouble on channel 5, and I had to install an FM trap. This proximity problem is why there is currently a fight between interests who would like to use the TV "white spaces" for unlicensed wireless internet devices, and the broadcasters and licensed wireless mic people, who are saying such devices may ruin DTV reception and wireless mic use by creating an interference zone around every home and apartment that installs such new wireless gear.

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by bgadow

I have a big stack of "S9" magazines that I've saved just for Kneitel's writing. Any kin to "Ask Joe Gutts?"

I have a Predicta which has homemade labels affixed saying something like "6 for 23, 8 for 42" which I have assumed meant it had strips. (I can't recall the actual channels offhand, though I did research it once and guess that it might have come from western PA originally) I also have an Emerson from about '53 with a strip for local channel 16-works well. Somewhere I have a mayonaise jar full of ch.16 strips for a Zenith.

Interesting. I didn't realize that other manufacturers besides Zenith used UHF strips to adapt VHF-only TVs for UHF reception. I did not realize, either, that the tuner in Philco's "Predicta" TV could be used with strips in the unused VHF channel positions, nor that any of the Emerson sets of the 1950s were UHF-adaptable that way as well.

A mayonnaise jar full of channel 16 strips for Zenith TVs? Did you salvage these from junked Zenith sets? Just curious.


You mentioned local channel 16 (CBS, I think) in your area. I know you can also get channel 47, which is ABC. Does your area have NBC service as well? I think I remember seeing a listing somewhere (probably RadioStationWorld.com, when that site still had TV station links) for a channel 36 translator that rebroadcasts a Virginia station (Portsmouth's WAVY-TV channel ten, NBC) to the Salisbury area. If there is such a translator, how well do you receive it where you are? I remember you told me, in a reply to one of my posts a while ago, that you did manage to get something on channel 36, but it was so weak it was difficult to tell exactly what station it was. If you cannot receive the channel 36 translator in your area, how did folks in that area get NBC television before cable?

I know today you probably get the locals in Salisbury, the local TV stations in Washington and Baltimore, etc. on cable, but I was just curious as to what was available in your area in the days before even analog cable. Would it have been possible to use a high-power deep-fringe antenna on a rotor in Federalsburg to get the three network stations in Washington, Baltimore or both? I think Federalsburg may be in an area much like central New Jersey, where they get stations from New York and Philadelphia equally well. Is your area similarly located between Washington and Baltimore, or at least close enough to both cities that if you had a good enough antenna, you could get every network station from both areas? Again, I'm just curious. That might be a good experiment to run before the analog stations go away next year.

[Pete Deksnis]

Originally Posted by bgadow

I have a big stack of "S9" magazines that I've saved just for Kneitel's writing. Any kin to "Ask Joe Gutts?"

No, two different guys.

Interesting that Herb Freedman is still known and remembered; his day job was in Brooklyn as chief engineer of WNYE-FM, the noncommercial station of the New York Department of Education. It was little known that he also ran the 'test lab' we used for test reports at Davis Publications in NYC. There were only about three others: the one guy in Long Island that Audio magazine used, CBS Labs in Connecticut used by High Fidelity magazine (in the seventies), and the ever popular Ziff-Davis guys Julian Hersh and Harry Houck (not sure about Houck's first name; but that's how I recall it). Anyway these guys (Hersh was the principal player) once ran a 'golden ears' article to establish credibility since they were getting old... and hearing goes.

Letters to the Editor (or Q&A) 'bylines' were not necessarily the writer's real name and in fact were usually not. At one time I was writing CB columns in two different magazines under the byline Kathy Martin and at the same time Herb Freedman wrote a monthly article in a third magazine under the same Kathy Martin byline! I later switched one byline to Chuck Baker (CB) and the other, in a camping magazine, to a phonetic version (Dexnis) of my real name, Deksnis.

"Joe Gutts" is an example of a prolific writer who could make you buy a magazine month after month. I didn't know the guy except to see him, and I can't recall his real name; he had been the Editor of Science and Mechanics before Tony Hogg took over the reigns, and he was writing that great column under the 'Gutts' pseudonym for Tony, who incidentally later went back to a second stint as Editor of Road & Track.

Tony story; maybe a bit further off topic: Tony came running into my office one day in the mid '70s and said did I know Barney's (a still famous clothier in NYC) had a sale on suits... and they were Kilgour, French, and Stanbury! Think of Tony all bubbly over delivering his great news. Think of Tony delivering his wonderful news with his heavy English accent. My actual response: Who the f**k is kilgour french and stanberry?!?

Well, what the hey, Englishman Tony knew the Kilgour, French, and Stanbury brand and shop in London and so convinced me to get one (they were only $60; he got three). Postlude: The suit was good quality; it's a loose fit in the English fashion; and it still hangs in my closet after all these years; I never wear it anymore.

Tony had been a race car driver in England before crossing the pond and taking up editorial duties over here... hence his editorial 'fit' with Road & Track and Science and Mechanics. One other thing. Joe Gutts got the same story from Tony; so, three months later, right there in his column, Gutts mocked Tony big-time over those 'baggy' English Kilgour, French, and Stanbury suits he always wore.

Also (back on topic), the CT-100 uses UHF strips; sixteen slots in the turret; fill them up any UHF/VHF way you want.

Pete

[bgadow]

Jeff, the strips I have are unused, from a long-gone Zenith dealer. I think I am right that they are the strips, and not just paraphenalia that went with them. Seems like the little envelopes include a replacement "window" to fit on the Zenith "bullseye" tuning knobs, in the slot where you put that strip.

There was never a full-time NBC affilliate, Jeff. In the early days WBOC carried all the networks, but from what I've seen from old TV Guides the vast majority was usually CBS. WMDT carried some NBC programming in the 80s, but mostly just sports. Nobody local had the Tonight Show or SNL. Here where I live good quality antennas were real common. Most houses had them. (though they are dissapearing) Usually mounted on a tower or a repurposed utility pole, and often with a rotor. With a good setup you can get all the DC/Baltimore VHF stations quite clear, on analog at least. The UHF stations are iffy. Growing up, 10 miles from where I live now, we had a good Winegard antenna on a pole but no rotor. It faced the city; trouble with that was it was facing the dead wrong direction for the local channels; they came in so poorly that you really couldn't watch them.

I have never viewed anything on 36 other than a slight difference in the color of the snow. I never realized, until you mentioned it, that there was such a translator-they certainly didn't promote it much. There is a 36 in far western MD, a PBS station, and that is what I thought was "tickling my tuner".

If you go north of here not too far you can capture the Philly stations. I suspect there are some folks ideally located with a rotor who can pull in all 3 markets quite well. There is also WGAL-8 in Lancaster which I have watched a few times in my DXing days, as well as the NBC affiliate on 40, I think Wildwood, NJ, maybe still WMGM? I have had some luck in the past DXing Norfolk, and AK member JCFitz mentioned having good luck with pulling in those stations at least in the area of the VA/MD border.

(probably very boring to the general populace here, but I enjoy talking about it with you, Jeff!)

Pete,
Quite a bit of good reading in many of those magazines. I like reading the "populars" just for the q&a columns. I will definately be on the lookout for some of those names!

[electroking]

Hello all,

This thread is far from boring!

Someone mentioned earlier that the maximum number of VHF channels
in a given city would be 7. I assume that those channels would have
to be 2, 4, 5 or 6, 7, 9, 11, 13. Is that correct?

In case anyone is wondering, I have evidence of an actual case where
channels 4 and 5 are used, and sharing the same antenna as well!
The big diplexers are quite something to behold!
These two channels are separated by a guard band of 4 MHz, so they
can coexist in the same area, and at the same time they are close
enough that the same wideband antenna can be used (66-82 MHz)
These two channels are in use as described above in Quebec City.
Does anyone know of a similar installation elsewhere?

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by electroking

Hello all,

This thread is far from boring!

Someone mentioned earlier that the maximum number of VHF channels
in a given city would be 7. I assume that those channels would have
to be 2, 4, 5 or 6, 7, 9, 11, 13. Is that correct?

In case anyone is wondering, I have evidence of an actual case where
channels 4 and 5 are used, and sharing the same antenna as well!
The big diplexers are quite something to behold!
These two channels are separated by a guard band of 4 MHz, so they
can coexist in the same area, and at the same time they are close
enough that the same wideband antenna can be used (66-82 MHz)
These two channels are in use as described above in Quebec City.
Does anyone know of a similar installation elsewhere?

I mentioned the maximum allowable number of stations in any given city is seven; the channels are 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11 and 13. Channels five and six cannot be assigned in the same city due to interference issues; this is also why either channel 5 or channel 6 (or both in some areas) is always vacant in any metropolitan area, and why most UHF television converters used these channels as their output frequencies.

Channels four and five can be and often were assigned right next to each other in the same area, however, because of the 4-MHz guard band you mentioned between the two channels (66-72 for 4 and 76-82 for 5). This situation exists in at least two metropolitan areas of the U.S. (New York City and Los Angeles) and also in areas such as Buffalo, New York which can receive a channel 5 station from outside the area (Buffalo itself has VHF channels 2, 4 and 7; the city is close enough to Toronto, Canada that channel 5 from the latter city is often received in Buffalo with a signal strong enough to watch).

Note as well that channels 13 and 14 can and sometimes were assigned adjacent to each other in the same metro area; this was possible because there is a much wider gap between channel 13 and channel 14 (254 MHz; 13 is 210-216 MHz and 14 is 470-476 MHz) than even between four and five, or six and seven (there is an 86-MHz gap between the latter two channels--channel six is 82-88 MHz and seven is 174-180 MHz).

UHF channels within the 14-69 range assigned in the same metropolitan area, however, must be separated by at least six channels to avoid interference between stations; that is, the nearest adjacent station to, for example, channel 14 would be channel 20 in a market with a channel 14 station and one on 20. The next available assignment in that market would be channel 26, and so on in six-channel increments, unless 26 was already in use locally; in the latter case the next station would be assigned on the nearest unused channel in that area.

I was in Princeton, New Jersey for my cousin's wedding in 1985. The motel I stayed in had a TV set (likely fed by a master antenna system) on which I could receive all seven New York stations and channels 3, 6 and 10 from Philadelphia as well. The reception from the Philadelphia stations was not perfect; there was a lot of adjacent-channel interference on channel 3 from New York's channel 2, on channel 6 from New York's channel 5 and on channel ten from New York's channel nine, but the stations were there nevertheless.