[NLRS] EN37ed - DTV - over the air

[Bill Davis Jr]

 Well Gary W0GHZ and I bought Zenith 901 converters from Circuit City. It is I think the only converter they sell. I am using it here in rural MN as well as down on the farm in Missouri. Happy with it's performance in MO and is ok here, but limited oppertunity for local use. The Zenith was coupon plus a bit over $20. Analog pass through.

  Locally (155mile N of MSP and 80miles  NW of Duluth ) I am using the converter to watch only one DTV channel. It is "channel 13" ABC, it is being broadcast on UHF 36 and will return to channel 13 VHF in Feb  on the drop dead date. This UHF transmitter is only 35miles from me so it does very well on my 16elem UHF yagi cut for channel 18.

  The switch over will be interesting here. We should be "ok" on ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS. ABC returning to chan 13 digital, PBS returning to Channel 9 digital. NBC and CBS plans digital service perhaps early. Their Duluth service both are "low band" VHF and therefore are forced to UHF for digital and that is too far for us at this location. However, NBC has a Channel 11 transmiter site 58.3miles to our NE that plans on switching over to digital by the second week of Jan.
Since the Duluth NBC and CBS stations are owned by the same company, they are "thinking" that on one digital channel they will provide CBS digital. "Interesting"  FOX has a 26Kw UHF transmitter site 50m NE and will remain analog until 2010 at least.

  SO .... after Feb, all those TV-preamps will be amplifying only my 6m and 2m sigs instead of channel 2-6. ARGH

  One down side is no longer will we be ble to monitor channel 2 video carrier freq for aurora and Es... I guess that is one reason we have beacons.

73  Bill   K0AWU


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