OTA problems, little consistency, minor miracle

[avoiceoreason]

I keep getting a "searching for signal" message for the OTA feed for FOX (Philly area). It started about 6 weeks ago which wasn't a huge deal since I just watched football on the Sunday Ticket channels and most shows were in repeat mode. Now with the playoffs and "24" starting I'm beginning to panic.

Most of the time it is just the blank screen with the error message. Occasionally I will get a choppy pixelated picture. Then miraculously last Sunday, as if on cue, I got a perfectly good feed for the Colts/Chief game and then it went back to "searching for signal."

All other networks come in perfectly fine.

Is this an antenna pointing problem? I went over a year with this antenna and no OTA problems (even with some pretty vicious wind storms).

Any things I should be checking? Thanks.

[JimSpence]

More likely this is a multipath problem. Do you have hills or buildings nearby? Lot's of trees that have now lost their leaves? What signal strengths do you get? Maybe your Fox affiliate has reduced power!

[okoaomo]

Most likely it is your final observation. The affiliate is running at reduced power to either break-in a new transmitter, filters, and or transmission line and antenna. In fact The FCC website has WTFX-DT at an Effective Radiated Power (ERP): 305. kW ERP. This is well below the usual high power 5000 to 10000 kW ERP of a perminent broadcast antenna. They are using a "crappy" ANDREW/ERI corp. antenna for that matter. I would suspect they will put up a real antenna by the Feb. '09 cut-off date. Moste FOX affiliates are way behind schedual on ATSC OTH rollout. They are probably Pumping up the power for the NFL broadcast and then going back down after the game. A good test will be to watch the NFL this weekend on Sat. & Sun. Then see if "24" is at higher power later on Sun. All-in-All consider yourself lucky. We do not have a ATSC OTH fox broadcast up here in Southern Maine.

p.s. here is the link for WTFX on the FCC website

http://www.fcc.gov/fcc-bin/tvq?list=0&facid=51568

Best Regards,
Kev.

[avoiceoreason]

Thanks everyone. Sorry for my belated reply, but I have been away.

I do have hills and lots of trees around. But why would losing leaves decrease the signal? I would think that would improve the signal. No? And it worked fine for a year through all four seasons so why all of the sudden? I'll check the signal strengths and post them.

Thanks Kev for posting the FCC link. Assuming I was reading it correctly, the 305 kW ERP is actually for FOX 42, but my FOX station is FOX 29 which according to the FCC site has a 5,000 kW ERP. So I wouldn't think signal strength would be a problem.

It now seems I get the pixelated, choppy, intermittent picture more often than the blank "searching for signal" message.

This is driving me crazy. Only one day to football and two to "24". Help me please!!!

[JimSpence]

Losing leaves does increase the signal. But, it also increases the reflected signal (ghosting), which causes multipath which prevents a receiver from locking onto a digital signal. A slight adjustment of the antenna may help reduce the multipath.