[Coco] S-video, DTV on Sutro

[John Donaldson]

As far as anntena failures, we have to inspect our anntenas once  a 
year. One year
we noticed that the SWR was varing all over the place. When we went up 
onto the roof
we dicovered that the main anntena had been struck by lighting and it 
looked like a
peeled banna. The outer fiberglass casing was split in three areas and 
were laying on
the roof like banna peels.
  Another time one of our main repeaters when off the air. When a crew 
got to the
repeater site, they found the repeater operating, but again the SWR was 
all over the place
when they when outside and shined thier headlites on the anntena, 
neither the anntena
or tower was there. This was around 2:00AM dark no moon. Looking around 
the radio
room we discovered the tower laying across a feld. Investigation showed 
that again
lighting had struck a guywire which broke. The added strain caused a 
cascaded event
and more guys broke and then whole tower fell down.

John Donaldson


John Donaldson

Stephen H. Fischer wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Kevin Diggs wrote:
>
>> Stephen H. Fischer wrote:
>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> Thanks.
>>>
>>> I will have to find the right time to take the pictures as the AD723 is
>>> in use many hours of the day displaying DTV pictures on my RCA TV.
>>>
>> Can you elaborate on this? Did you build your own HDTV tuner?
>
>
> I purchased the "MyHD" PCI card which is an unusual HDTV card
> for a PC in that it drives the HDTV Monitor directly. I did not know that
> at the time. This forces you to use only the software that comes with the
> card and locks you out of the MS Media Center software.
>
> Thus you are dependant on that one company funding the all the software
> instead of MS and many other companies spreading the cost around.
>
> Not that the MS Media software is better, you are just locked out and
> this is not expected to change.
>
> Linux may be a system where attempts are being made to support this
> card with Open Source software.
>
> My Desktop system was completely rebuilt with the Case the only
> part of the old system that was kept. New Quiet PS, new motherboard
> and CPU, a Huge very heavy heatsink for the CPU and four quiet drives,
> two drives each in two RAID-0 arrays. 640 Gig total and 2 Gig memory.
> New graphics card coming soon to free up a PCI-E slot for a second HDTV
> card.
>
> The "MyHD" PCI card requires a very fast CPU and you need a lot of 
> storage
> for HDTV programs and the Video editing that I do some of.
>
> It is my very first system that the CPU usage has not been stuck at 100%
> almost all the time. Good HTPC's are not cheap.
>
>>> Many of the DTV San Francisco stations are off the air a lot just 
>>> now so
>>> I might be able to do it soon.
>>>
>> They went down shortly before the Orange bowl. Had to watch that on
>> NTSC; now an experience that I can barely stand (and I am not talking
>> about the picture detail in HDTV or any crap like that - it is the lack
>> of noise and multi-path crap that is virtually impossible to avoid in
>> NTSC in an urban environment). If you go to KQED's (SF PBS) web site and
>> go to the HD schedule you will see a note about "the antenna for system
>> b" failing. This took KGO, KQED, and K-some-station-I-don't-watch off
>> the air. They are all down again today (3rd day in a row and yes they
>> come back up at night ... those that still have antenna anyway). One can
>> only assume that they are replacing whatever blew up today.
>
>
> The other station is KMTP. I record the 4:30AM, 10:30AM and 4:30PM
> showings of "In Focus". Now I have gone back to my VCR for them.
>
> Yes, I am not watching HDTV but DTV with my RCA NTSC TV.
> The lack of noise is a great improvement. HD display later.
>
> Subscribe to "HDTV-in-SFbay"  @ yahoogroups.com
>
> There currently is a running description of what is happening on Sutro.
>
>>> There are a huge number of antennas on Sutro and when there is trouble
>>> with one it affects several stations at once and many times all the DTV
>>> stations must be shut down for worker safety. There are 11 DTV Stations
>>> transmitting from the tower. I cannot find the analog count, each of
>>> those has main and backup antennas.
>>>
>> The now retired former transmitter supervisor at KGO has a web site that
>> has a PDF containing antenna locations on Sutro. His name is Ray 
>> Herring.
>>
>>> Lots of complaints about the possibility of missing the Rose Bowl in 
>>> HD.
>>>
>> They managed to "get it up" during the game. 7-1 went down about 15
>> minutes after it was over though. Can you do me a huge favor? Can you
>> contact the station and inquire about how they managed to get their DTV
>> signal up for the game? I am dieing of curiosity to know how they did
>> it. Don't mention my name. They don't like me. The crack about them
>> needing to remember to straighten the coat hanger they use as a
>> transmission antenna (for NTSC VHF 7) may have made them mad. Another
>> jab to make sure it is metal probably did not help either. If you are a
>> football fan you could add a thank you for them doing whatever they did
>> to get that really hyped game on the air.
>>
>>>
>>> Stephen H. Fischer
>>>
>>
>> kevin
>
>
> Read the recent messages on "HDTV-in-SFbay". The complete story is 
> already
> there.
>
> While the Silicon Valley did not get very much rain, San Francisco and 
> north
> have had a series of very wet and stormily weeks, it has been on the 
> news.
>
> I do not know the failure modes of TV transmitter antennas and if they 
> are
> different for Digital ones but I suspect that the rain and wind had a 
> part.
>
> The analog antennas may be failing just as often but we do not notice 
> their
> failure as they switch to backup antennas. There is not room left for 
> backup
> Digital antennas on Sutro until 2009.
>
> Stephen H. Fischer
>
>