XHBC-TV and others

[kenglish]

Since the VHF low-band is now clear of local full-power TV channels around here, I've gotten back in to TV DXing.

Got a good station break, with an ID, from XHBC-TV (Channel 3) in Mexicali (600 miles) yesterday. Had fairly good signals popping in and out on channels 2 and 4 prior to KSL switching off. Found faint signals on 5 and 6 later.

Around 6 PM, I was getting very strong co-channel reception of two stations that looked to be Mexican on channel 2.

All this was with a "barefoot" VHF-only "suburban" rated antenna (Taco/Wade ZIP-8V) on my balcony, with a 50 MHz HPF and an (88-108 MHz) FM Trap. No preamp at this time.

[CAwasinNJ]

Funny part of that is, you could be getting some ATSC DX and not even be able to tell. It would look like blank channel on an NTSC set and might not be strong enough to decode on a ATSC tuner.

Has anyone heard of any ATSC skip DX reports yet?

[kenglish]

Haven't gotten any for Utah, that I know of. But, quite a few are turning up on various DXing boards and on YouTube.

[kenglish]

After my last post, I remembered an old trick for finding DTV signals.....
If you have acommunications receiver that can tune the TV channel bands and do USB or LSB signals, just tune to 310 KHz above the lower edge of the channel (xxx.310 MHz) in upper or lower sideband, and listen for the beat.
You can split the antenna feed to your TV and the radio receiver. When you hear the beat, try to get a lock on the DTV station.

[kenglish]

Looks like we had some strong sporadic-e reception, or something, last night.
I got an analog "nightlight" station on channel 2, running the Sqrignoli DTV tape. And, evidence of sync on every channel from 2-6.
All this was on a DB-2, two-bay UHF Bowtie antenna (the big VHF antenna is in the shop for repairs)!

[CAwasinNJ]

Wow. That's very impressive. VHF on a UHF bowtie is horrible even for locals. (I was trying to get recordings of the final night from on and I could barely pick up anything from near Ogden.)

Have you entered any DX competitions?

[kenglish]

Yesterday afternoon, Monday, July 13, I heard audio (using the NBFM Mode) on my handheld scanner, an Icom R2, indoors,....with an 8" whip antenna, on the channel 2 aural frequency (59.740 MHz).

I heard commercials for Canada, and the call sign CKCO. Turned the outside (3rd floor balcony VHF) antenna toward the north-east....looking THROUGH my apartment. Got intermittent video and audio for about an hour.

I called their engineering department, at their main station in Kitchener, Ontario, and confirmed it was their satellite-transmitter, a 100 KW on channel 2, at Wiarton, northwest of Toronto.
I later took a FI measurement outside, and got an uncorrected level of 30-40 uV/m on Visual, and 10 uV/m on aural.

Later, I was getting what appears to be CKCK-TV from Regina, with similar results.

[dxstuboy]

I was also getting CKCK Regina SK yesterday via Es, around 4:15 PM.

Out of that small opening, I was able to see CKAL-1 (Lethbridge, AB) and I believe CBKST-13 (Spiritwood, SK)

The commercials on CKCK were all for Regina, so that was easy to confirm. CKAL had a CityTV logo bottom right, but I am still not 100% sure on CBKST-13. All three are on channel 2. Channel 3 had a weak picture I couldn't make out. Nothing higher than 4 at times, and the only FM skip that came in was yesterday around 12 PM.

FWIW, my logs can be found here: www.ubstudios.com/dx/slctv.html