THE WORLDWIDE TV-FM DX ASSOCIATION Serving the UHF-VHF Enthusiast
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THE WORLDWIDE TV-FM DX ASSOCIATION Serving the UHF-VHF Enthusiast THE VHF-UHF DIGEST IS THE OFFICIAL PUBLICATION OF THE WORLDWIDE TV-FM DX ASSOCIATION DEDICATED TO THE OBSERVATION AND STUDY OF THE PROPAGATION OF LONG DISTANCE TELEVISION AND FM BROADCASTING SIGNALS AT VHF AND UHF. WTFDA IS GOVERNED BY A BOARD OF DIRECTORS: TOM BRYANT, GREG CONIGLIO, BRUCE HALL, DAVE JANOWIAK AND MIKE BUGAJ. Editor and publisher: Mike Bugaj Circulation: Mike Bugaj Treasurer: Dave Janowiak Editorial Staff: Tom Bryant, Greg Coniglio, Victor Frank, George W. Jensen, Jeff Kruszka, Keith McGinnis, Fred Nordquist, Matt Sittel, Doug Smith, Thomas J. Yingling, Jr., John Zondlo ANARC Rep: Jim Thomas, Back Issues: Dave Nieman, Original Cover Design: Harry Hayes _______________________________________________________________________________________ OCTOBER 2001 - CHECK THIS LIST! CONTENTS Page One 1 In order to keep your VUD arriving at your The Mailbox 2 home without interruption, look for your name TV News – Doug Smith 4 on this list. Your membership ends on the last FM News – Greg Coniglio 9 day of the month shown. Renew early! Eastern TV DX – Matt Sittel 17 Western TV DX – Victor Frank 20 October Satellite News – George Jensen 29 Bill Mitchell Robert Delaney WeatherRadio DX – Matt Sittel 30 George Hamer Mituhiro Hukunaga Southern FM DX –John Zondlo 31 Keith Short Dr. Joel Rosenburg Northern FM DX – Keith McGinnis 42 Edward Sirovy Steve Solomon Time Tunnel – Tom Bryant 54 Steve Branch Jeff Kitsko Improving Your UHF TV Recept. 56 Karl Zuk John Callarman Renewal Form and more 58 November ***** John Adams Mike Collins John Jefferson Bill Nollman The eVUD! Dave Pomeroy John J. Rieger OCTOBER 2001 Marvin Shults Matt Sittel Randall Trapp Lenny Goldberg Rick Shaftan Bruce Hall Here’s the eVUD for October 2001. Everything Don Niles Scott Altice you’d expect to see in the VUD is here except for Photo News. We ran into file size problems If you have already renewed and see your with Photo News this month. With a little luck name here, please disregard it. Check the we’ll have it fixed for next month. Enjoy. Mailbox. Your name may already be there. The WTFDA List on Topica IMPORTANT RENEWAL CHANGES With around 135 Effective immediately, all checks or subscribers, the WTFDA list money orders sent for new memberships (reflector) on Topica.com is a and membership renewals should be made favorite of many of the club’s payable to DAVE JANOWIAK . Please do members. The WTFDA list is famous for its NOT make out any checks or money orders instant E skip and Tropo alerts, lively to WTFDA because this will slow down the discussions of topics relating to television and processing of your renewal and may delay FM Dxing and radio in general, help with unidentified stations, equipment and tuner the return of your check to you. However, reviews by Ed Hanlon, Mike Hawk and others, all renewals and new memberships should help with piecing together a killer DX shack, be mailed to WTFDA at the P.O. Box 501, the latest news on RDS in America, digital Somersville, CT address as usual. television, IBOC and much more. To subscribe, For those who don’t remember, send an email to David is WTFDA treasurer and this move has been made for legal reasons. Thank [email protected]. you all for your co-operation! 1 WTFDA MAILBOX P.O. Box 501 Somersville, CT 06072 Mike Bugaj [email protected] OCTOBER 2001 John Vervoort(NY) sent up copies of two verifications he got from his summer E Greetings and welcome to the Mailbox! skip. Rather than print them here, I scanned Golly, did the eastern USA and Canada them and emailed them to Tom Yingling. Tom have some great tropo in early September. does the verie column and this type of material If you are not on the WTFDA email list then should go to him anyway. If you have any read the reports in this month’s VUD veries or verie signers, send that material to Tom at the address on the inside back page. because you’ll find some extreme FM DX Nice going on the veries, John! here. In the mail was a postcard from Ken Onyschuk (IL) who was sad to see FM News Every once missing from the last VUD. Well Ken, Greg in a while a should be back with a big one this month. John Dxer winds his also sent a list of NFL flagship stations, some way through of which are on FM, which I could edit and use New England, FM flagships as space allows. and such was Roosevelt Crawford (KS) writes: “I’m the case on interested in FM DX. I am using a 1979 Sansui Sept 4th when G 22000 Receiver, RG-6 quadshield and a ten Eastern TV element Radio Shack yagi pointed south with Editor Matt most of the Topeka stations nulled out. I don’t Sittel and his very lovely wife Karen drove have a rotor and I’m not using an antenna preamp because I’m less than one mile from down from Hampton Beach, NH and made KJCK 94.5. The antenna is 25’ high. I get 4 a detour up I-91 so my wife and I could join stations from Tulsa and two from Oklahoma them for dinner at the East Windsor City about 50% of the time. I usually listen to Cracker Barrel. It was good food and great KMOD-97.5 Tulsa or KATT-100.5 in OKC. company and two hours flew by very KDMM-105.7 went off he air about a month quickly. It was easy to spot the Nebraska ago. Two days ago I heard KJRL-105.7 “Radio license plates in the parking lot! for Life 105.7”. The new format is Christian. The power seems to be the same. KMAJ-107.7 MEMBERS AND MORE Topeka is very weak since they moved their xmtr to the east.” This month we welcome two more new And from veteran TV Dxer Bob Seybold: members. Let’s welcome James Roseman to “ Happy to continue in the club. It has been a the club. James lives in the beautiful city of great E skip season as we get into late July. Moline, IL. Welcome, Jim! Next say hi to Jeff Only a few days since late May when there Lehmann. Jeff lives just south of Boston in was no skip. Many big openings with intense Hanson, MA and is also a ham and is young signals, some double hop, some high band enough to get him membership for the low skip. Tonight as I write, the Canadians to the student rate of $15 a year. Jeff is also a regular north are in, also Dakotas, Wyoming, Kansas, on WTFDA chat. Welcom Jeff! Florida, etc. all in. (Let’s face it Bob…you’re Over on the renewal side we have F.J. just a skip magnet –ed). Issard (ON), Scott Fybush (NY), George One other thing that came in the mail Greene (OH), Bill Smith (MA), Bob Seybold recently was a mysterious package with a (NY), Peter George (MA), Eric Voytko (VA), Cape Cod address. It turned out to be a Randall Trapp (MN), Glenn Hauser (OK), videotape from Roy Barstow. Roy had some Wolfgang Schneiter (CA), Roosevelt great tropo video on that tape, but what really Crawford (OK), Calvin Glover (MD), John caught my attention was a segment that lasted Adams (OR), Joe Fela (NJ), Steve Solomon a few minutes long of Roy’s 2-hop TV (MA), Kurt Nelson (PA), Paul Kinnaly (MA) reception of channel 2 in Nicaragua from July and Karl Zuk (NY). 5, 2000, the same day some of us here heard Joining us on the WTFDA list as an 2-hop from Mexico! Next year I intend to watch associate member is Bogdan Chiochiu ch2 even closer than I do now! from the Montreal area. Bogdan is 15 and a verry intelligent kid. He keeps us all on our toes! 2 How Roy Barstow Started Dxing We got a good deal on a 3 bedroom ranch house in Falmouth-Cape Cod and moved This month’s semi-irregular feature in. I did not like the hustle and bustle of belongs to Roy Barstow. We might want Boston and was glad to move out. While to subtitle it “How to Haul a Tower Across living in Boston for about 2 years my only the Sagamore Bridge without Losing Your DX was on a portable TV with rabbit ears. Life.” Here goes: Lawrence no longer used the tower that “I grew up in Walpole, MA in a family much, and said that I could have it. We put of 7 men and 1 girl. Two of my brothers the tower on top of his pick-up truck and were influential in starting the DX bug in drove from Walpole to Cape Cod on a me. Monday morning around 2am. I remember The oldest, Lawrence, used to listen to even now going over the bridge with the AM and shortwave and the aircraft band. Cape Cod Canal below, all the time Ralph who was next in age to me got his thinking and saying $don t please, don t novice license and I would watch him DX slide off!# We made it home and got the and help with mounting antennas, etc. tower up fine. I started Dxing the AM band after one The next year I decided to put a of my brothers used to pull in WWVA screen on the 7 foot dish. No one else had country music with a crystal set.