Nov 5, 2009 8:04 PM Your antennas look like this.
Or this.
We need an antenna for the tower shown in my last post. Now, broadcast antennas are built to order. You just don't go to your local Radio Shack to find one. So, who better to go to than Jampro Antennas, located right here in River City. Jampro is one of just a handful of broadcast antenna manufacturers world-wide. Last week, Richard, our Transmitter Supervisor and project manager for this endeavor, dropped in on Jampro to check on the progress of our antenna. Here are a few shots of the antenna, currently under construction.
And lookie here, they're also building an antenna for KVIE, Channel 6.
Check out our antenna, right next to the Channel 6 antenna. Now, why is theirs bigger than ours? Actually, you are only seeing one fourth of ours in the picture.
Lots of copper.
And, they have the equipment to test everything before it goes up on the tower.
BH Oct 28, 2009 8:00 PM Even though most of you people out there watch us via cable or dish, we do still believe in transmitters. You would be surprised just how many out there watch the pictures coming directly from our transmitters in Walnut Grove.
So just who watches us via our transmitters?
Most who are on cable in the hinterlands.
Dish Network and DirecTV customers.
Outside antenna users.
Indoor antenna users.
So, we have this big backup tower, all 1,500 feet of it, that used to house our backup analog transmitter for KOVR, Channel 13.
Shortly following the June 12th analog shutdown date, we had the analog transmitter scrapped and pretty much emptied the transmitter room.
A couple of weeks ago, we took delivery of a brand new transmitter which will provide the backup signals for both KMAX, Channel 31, and KOVR, Channel 13.
This is a liquid cooled, solid state, transmitter. It is cooled using heat exchangers, which are kind of like the radiator in your car.
The actual transmitter will be assembled into these two racks.
The devices that actually generate the signal you watch on Channel 13 or Channel 31 are called "exciters". The transmitter has two of them.
We hope to have all of this operational by the end of December.
BH Oct 22, 2009 6:38 PM I've had a bunch of phone calls from Charter Cable customers in the Turlock area in the past few days.
Comments like this:
Why is the sound track off from the video track? I haven't been able to watch anything on your channel all day because it is very frustrating when I am hearing one thing and watching another. Just wondering if it would be fixed soon. Thanks.
And this:
When will the word sync problem be fixed? I was surprised to wake up this morning and the problem of delay between the speaker and the words still existed. It is distracting and I hope will be fixed soon.
And this:
When will you get the sound and lips to sync? We had to use a different Chanel to watch the news. The problem occurs most at Sat and Sunday.
How about one more:
Help! The sound does not correspond with the picture. This is a problem with some if not all people in our viewing area. It is very distracting. Can you advise me on what can be done. I don't think you want to lose viewers but it is very hard to watch. The news is particularly annoying this way. Please let me know what might be wrong.
Well, everything leaving our studio has been just fine, thank you.
I did call some terrific guys at Charter and they assure me that the problem has been fixed. Very quick response from some real pros.
It never hurts to let me know when there is a problem. Sometimes it is our problem and sometimes it is not. When it's not our problem I may just know who to call to get it fixed for you.
BH Oct 15, 2009 8:10 PM Had a few reasons this week for you TV viewers to wonder what's wrong with your blankety-blank TV.
Let's start with a program we have on Tuesday nights, called The Good Wife. We managed to screw it up for some of you along with the first part of our CBS13 News, following the show. We had an audio distribution amplifier decide to crap out on us. Thank Bryan and Bill for taking care of that problem in relatively quick fashion. Those watching our analog feed on cable and DirecTV were not affected.
The same day, we had quite a storm, as some of you may recall. Take a really close look at the picture, below, and you will see a rope died around the feed horn on the ugliest microwave dish on this tower.
Naturally, that ugly dish belongs to Good Day. Don't know what all of those other dishes are for. Naturally, the rope had to completely screw up the performance of the microwave dish, affecting our live CHP traffic reports from Stockton...
But, we're not done screwing up Good Day!
This morning, those viewers, who are not on cable, lost the Good Day program at around 8:45 AM. That's what happens when a $35,000 tube in your transmitter dies.
BH Oct 6, 2009 7:48 PM You viewers (or former analog viewers) up in the hills who have given up on digital television are going to be interested in this post.
I had a viewer in Gold Run call me about a week ago. This guy has been driving me nuts for over a year now because he has been unable to receive anything but Channel 31 at his house. We'll take that but we would certainly like for him to be able to watch CBS13 too!
He has tried all kinds of antennas including the Channel Master 4228 that I recommend highly.
The reason he called was to share his success with the Antennas Direct 91XG.
So far, the results have been outstanding for him. He called again, today, to let me know that reception continues to be perfect. This may just be the antenna to use in those foothill locations where reception, or lack thereof, has been a problem. I like the screen reflector in the back, which is what makes the Channel Master 4228 such a good antenna. The 91XG, however, also has much higher gain than the Channel Master.
This antenna is not for everyone. I would use it as a last resort. It is VERY directional and needs to be mounted securely. In addition, this antenna is nearly 8 feet long.
One more thing. You should know that this antenna will do you no good at all for receiving 6 and 10. It is strictly a UHF antenna only. But.....who cares about 10?
If anyone tries it, let me know the results.
BH Sep 25, 2009 8:33 PM When we do a live shot from, say, Yuba City, chances are we are using our equipment up on the Sutter Buttes.
The Buttes are really an extinct volcano that popped up right smack in the middle of the Valley.
This makes for a perfect place to place various communications sites.
Some of the local stations have equipment on the Buttes, including the good guys (that would be us).
This is really quite a mountain. To get up there, we drive a rather precarious one-lane road to a parking lot, just below the top. At that point, you take a mini funicular railway to the top.
This picture shows the tracks.
This picture shows the landing at the top.
Our trucks will aim their signals to the white microwave dish antenna.
Those Sutter Buttes weather shots you see every day? Yep, they come from one of these cameras.
It all comes together inside, the building on top of the mountain. These are the microwave radios.
BH Sep 18, 2009 8:15 PM Well, that was a really crappy name for this post....
I walked by our Engineering Manager's office (Donna-the-Guru) and saw this sitting on a dreadfully neat and clean credenza:
Seems that Good Day was going to be doing a remote at a local Starbucks and needed a way to watch themselves. Worked great. Who says a 2-Bay antenna, at ground level, won't work?
BH
Sep 16, 2009 7:30 PM
I received the following email from a very knowlegable viewer and thought I would share it with all of you.
This past week, I visited a friend in Grass Valley (Within your coverage area), and discovered some problems that may be of interest to your viewers.
My friend complained about how lousy the new digital TV system was, and complained about missing his favorite programs, since he could now only receive only two or three channels.
This seemed strange to me, since his house was located high on a ridge, with a clear signal path to TV stations. I asked to look at his antenna, and discovered that he had a decent all channel antenna with an amplifier, and that it was pointed in the right direction to receive the stations at Walnut Grove. To further confirm my suspicions, I got on his computer, and entered his address into the simulator at www.tvfool.com. This simulator provides generally accurate information on all of the TV signals available at any address in the United States. The simulator suggested that he should be able to receive over 20 digital stations at his address. Being a believer in doing the simple things first, I got his TV remote and performed a channel scan. The channel scan detected 22 digital stations, including ALL of the major stations at Walnut Grove, and many of the stations from San Francisco. Needless to say, he was thrilled with the results.
Viewers need to be aware that these new digital TV sets will not work properly if simply brought home and plugged in. A channel scan is always necessary, and for many of these new sets, that is not enough, since many of these sets are shipped from the factory with the tuning mode set to "CABLE". Such a set will not detect any stations when performing a channel scan, and must have the tuning mode set to ANTENNA" or "AIR" before performing the channel scan.
Dwight
BH Sep 15, 2009 7:50 PM Hey gang! Remember me? I haven't done a post in a while. You see, I also have something to do with managing part of this place and have been involved in this process that the bean counters refer to as "THE BUDGET". I prefer to call it "THE WISH LIST".
Anyway, I'm going to do some posts to describe to you just how we do things around here and we're going to start with how our signal gets from us to you.
This one will deal with those of you who watch CW31 and CBS13 on cable.
Most of the cable companies, because they are in the CABLE business, run direct fiber optic cables to the local television studios. This bypasses the transmitters in Walnut Grove and results in a fairly reliable and high quality picture delivered to your TV, depending on just what the cable company does to the signal once it is in their hands.
Our studio for KOVR and KMAX is located in West Sacramento. The home cable company for West Sacramento is Wave Broadband and not Comcast. Comcast, however, is the major cable company serving the Sacramento-Stockton-Modesto market.
To get our signals to Comcast, we feed our audio and video into this box.
See that yellow wire with the green connector? The one plugged into the right center of the box? That's the fiber feeding CBS13 and CW31 to most of you in the major metropolitan areas. The fiber feeds the Wave Broadband systems as well as the huge Comcast fiber backbone, which delivers our signals to most Comcast systems as well as some smaller cable systems such as the SuddenLink cable system serving the Grass Valley area.
The picture above shows the fiber equipment feeding the SureWest system.
This little box feeds KOVR, CBS13, to ATT Cable. No fiber for KMAX, however. ATT relies on off-air pickup of the CW31 signal.
About half of you are watching us via these three fibers. Pretty scary? You bet!!
BH Sep 1, 2009 8:18 PM Yes we do! And we care about our sister stations in Los Angeles.
Today, we packed up and shipped out the KMAX backup transmitter. It goes to our sister stations in Los Angeles who may soon be affected by the current fires which are nearing the Mt. Wilson transmitter site. If that site burn over, the stations will be off the air.
Should that happen, the KMAX transmitter will go into service at a backup site, covering both KCBS-TV and KCAL-TV.
BH | |
