WDIV/NBC Detroit Signal Quality

[KeithAbbott]

@jasonl; looking for some help with signal quality issues for WDIV/NBC Detroit, especially since the Winter Olympics start in a few weeks:

• Televes 149483 DAT BOSS MIX UHF-VHF attic antenna (positioned at 118 degrees true north)
• Televes 531981 SmartKom Antenna Amplifier and Combiner (all signal amplification happens in this device, antenna amplifier has been disabled)
• HDFX-4K-DEV device IDs: 10AAB199, 10ABADC7 (firmware version 20250815: Send diagnostic information flag has been enabled for the past week+)

There are occasions where the signal for WDIV is practically perfect; for instance, January 1st thru January 4th. Then, starting January 5th, the signal became rough and has been rough ever since (see attached graph). The broadcast tower is 103 degrees true north from my house, approximately 9.4 miles away. No mountains or hills. Tropo does not currently look to be a concern.

Looking at the graph, there are four different times when the symbol quality dropped to zero, with signal quality fluctuating above and below 30dB. This has caused pixelization and picture stuttering when viewing.

Can you look at the diagnostic information and see if it provides any insight on how to increase my signal quality? If it looks like the signal strength from the tower is too low coming into the antenna, I can switch to my Televes 149784 DAT BOSS LR UHF antenna.

Graph: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UgMjHR ... sp=sharing

[jasonl]

Signal strength seems OK, right at 0dBmV. Can you set the signal source to Cable and run a channel scan, then set it back to Antenna and run another scan?

[KeithAbbott]

Done.

[billmich]

this station has been operating from aux tower/aux power......

https://www.mibuzzboard.com/phpBB3/view ... hp?t=66809

[KeithAbbott]

billmich, thank you for providing this information, I appreciate it.

Although to be honest, my first thought was "are you freaking kidding me!".

I would not have any issue with this, if television stations posted on their website when they are not operating from their primary transmitter. That way, when I have troubles, I could just go to their website and see that they are not transmitting at full power. But I know of no way to find that information out, except thru word-of-mouth like now.

The last time this happened (last October), it took two weeks to get a response from WDIV to my emails. Ultimately, I had to cc all of the WDIV email addresses that I could find on their website to get a response. I hate having to do that, but come on, two weeks? This is the response that I received:

Code: Select all

We apologize for the delay in response on this problem you have been experiencing. 

Since October 5th, the transmission line work effecting your reception has been completed. We are back at full power on our Main Antenna. 

At this point, I would recommend to fully rescan the channel settings on your TV(s).

For faster response in the future, please use our WDIV Help Center https://help.clickondetroit.com/home/

No mention of any follow-up work necessary in a couple of months. Maybe this outage was unplanned...

There is a growing part of me that regrets even heading down the OTA path. I feel like I am always battling signal quality issues. Multipath, tropo, transmitter issues, etc. etc.