Hi! New here + 1950s DX Photos...

[Hawkwind]

Originally Posted by HadYourPhil

Your "Unknown channel 6b" is WBRC-TV, Birmingham, AL.
Used to do this, too. Need to se where my pictures are...

Thanks!..

[Adam]

Cool pictures.
I used to DX a lot of TV. I started back in the mid-80s through the mid-90s with a mid 60s Zenith b/w I got from my grandfather, I had one TV antenna ontop of one of the sheds, an FM only antenna ontop of the chimney, an another tv antenna in the attic. Eventually I got a few more sets, late 60s RCA b/w, and a mid 70s Zenith 12" b/w ss portable, but the old Zenith was still the best for DX. With that FM antenna ontop of chimney (which was the highest of the 3 antennas) I could usually pull in ch 3 and ch 6 from Sacramento at night (we were in San Jose). Since I got back into TVs in the past few years, living in apartments I've been unable to put up a good antenna. I'm not sure yet whether I'll eventually get into digital TV DX or not. I've heard that you can still pull in distant stations with the converters, but somehow, if it's not actually an old set that's receiveing the signals, I loose interest. I read somewhere, although I don't know if it's true or not, that some uhf stations might not have to switch to digital. I hope that's the case.

[HadYourPhil]

LPTV stations don't have to switch.

[W.B.]

I noticed in all those pictures, that by the mid-'50's WATV in Newark, NJ (later WNTA-TV and WNDT, now public TV's WNET) used the exact same test pattern design as created by WPIX in 1949 and used by that station well into the late 1970's. Would anyone know what TP was used by 13 in the 1958-61 period as WNTA?

Also, I'm interested as to any place where to find DX photos of color circular test patterns from the 1960's and '70's (outside of Jeff Kadet's DX Photos site which I've seen and have been impressed by) - or at least B&W photos of same.

[Greg B.]

Around 1971, cable TV was brought to Atlantic Canada. Crude by today's standards. The nearest US stations were several hundreds of miles away, and there was no microwave link yet built from the head-end, on the Canadian side of the US-Canada border near Calais, Maine, to the destination city of Halifax, Nova Scotia. The government regulator, the CRTC, only allowed us 2 US stations originally, the NBC affiliate in Bangor, Maine, WLBZ Channel 2, and the PBS station, WMED-TV. Given the considerable distance between Calais and Bangor, reception from the head-end antenna, even with a large tower, was hit and miss, especially on Channel 2. For some time until the microwave link got built, programming was a week late, as tapes were made and "bicycled" to cable systems in Nova Scotia for replay the next week. Pretty unbelievable.

The point of all this is that when WLBZ would fade out due to weather conditions, sometimes other signals would take its place. I remember in particular watching it one day around 1973 and seeing WLBZ disappear, only to be replaced with the crystal-clear signal of WMT channel 2, the CBS affiliate in Cedar Rapids, Iowa for an extended period. This was thrilling to me as we did not get a CBS affiliate (and would not until the mid-1980s) so it was like watching something forbidden. I was dumbfounded as to how this occurred and actually did some research in the days that followed. Somewhere I learned about signal skipping due to tropospheric effects. So if nothing else, it taught me something I didn't otherwise know.

[electronjohn]

An analog tuner was nice...you could use the fine tuning to dial in stations that were "offset" a few kHz from the channel's center frequency. VHF stations were assigned either a - or + offset to minimize co-channel interference from others on the same channel. A few stations were licensed with zero offset.

[Zenith26kc20]

I still DX with the new ATSC system. It's harder to do but just as rewarding! I use a CM4251 Channel Master Parascope and a Wade VIP-307 in New Orleans, a CM4251 Channel Master Parascope and a Wade VU-937 SR with the P8Z UHF plug in in Bay Saint Louis, Mississippi.
Analog from Mexico and Canada come in occaisionally. On a good day I have reached out on digital to Austin Texas. I use the Channel Master 7777 amplifiers, one on each antenna and use the older Alliance rotors as they handle the weight loads without problems.

[ChrisW6ATV]

Very nice TV DX setup!

I live in the S.F. Bay Area, which is surrounded by hills, so I don't think I would have much luck receiving out-of-area signals. One day, I might put a good-sized TV antenna and CM 7777 on my 55-foot ham radio tower, though.