I miss analog TV!

[Tom S]

Just gotta say I miss analog TV and picking up TV channel 2 on my Icom R75 on 59.750 MHZ a few years back.  Best TV DX I had was hearing a station located in Eastern Virginia.  Funny how the Sporadic-E was that day, I could hear two different stations by switching between a vertical and horizontal antenna, and only one station was audible on either antenna.

[Fansome]

I used to live in NW Missouri, and I did a lot of TV DX there. I had a handheld B&W Sony TV with just a whip antenna, but on a good evening I could pick up stations from all over the Midwest, as far away as OK and TX. The nice thing about having a handheld TV was that I could walk all over the house and outside, searching for the best signal, something that's kind of hard to do with a full-sized TV.

I know that there are portable digital TVs now; maybe I'll get one and see what I can manage to DX these days...

quote author=Tom S link=topic=8442.msg23162#msg23162 date=1350076304]
Just gotta say I miss analog TV and picking up TV channel 2 on my Icom R75 on 59.750 MHZ a few years back.  Best TV DX I had was hearing a station located in Eastern Virginia.  Funny how the Sporadic-E was that day, I could hear two different stations by switching between a vertical and horizontal antenna, and only one station was audible on either antenna.
[/quote]

[BoomboxDX]

Funny, I was thinking earlier tonight that I've nearly forgotten what analog TV actually looked like when we used to watch it.  I'm already used to the look of over the air digital TV.  All those blurry figures, how did we live through it?

[Tom S]

Yeah, and not to mention snow on the screen when the station was weak.

I've never tried digital TV DXing but I'm guessing it will be pretty hard because most digital receivers will blank out when a signal is too weak.  With the old analog signals you could at least see *something* through the snow.

[kmorgan]

Last month I was doing a scan and caught KUDF-LP on channel 14, an analog Azteca America out of Tucson AZ, 109 mi from my location in Phoenix. KUDF is analog Maximum ERP: 9.990 kW. I thought I was catching Mexico  at first. I am using a Clearstream 4 UHF antenna about 30' above ground. The signal was poor at best. Yes, I too miss analog TV a lot! It is (was...) a lot of fun TV dxing. I currently receive some Tucson stations well with my antenna and sometimes catch some 2edge digital stations about 105 miles away. I am in a condo and on 2nd floor and have great envy for my top floor neighbors who must get great reception considering they are about 70 feet above average terrain.

[mr. mike]

I used to get three LA TV stations in the 1980s, but that was only 200+ miles away. I miss Tom Hatten running Popeye cartoons on Saturday mornings and some Hollywood flick at 1pm on KTLA, much as I miss the sleazy charm of Bill Balence's AM radio call in show.

[ETM71]

I miss Captain Chesapeake here in Baltimore. And Count Gore de Vol hosting Creature Feature. Interesting television is long gone, I'm afraid.

[ChrisSmolinski]

I miss Captain Chesapeake here in Baltimore. And Count Gore de Vol hosting Creature Feature. Interesting television is long gone, I'm afraid.

TV Pow!

[mrsmiley]

Used to love to do TV DX back over the past 20 years or so. Now its hard enough to get decent signals from the local TV stations whose towers are only about 25 to 30 miles away without losing some of the signal. I recently moved to the semi country from an old inner ring suburb of my local 1 million population city. At that place, I would get about 30 channels but now its down to about 15. I remember getting DX TV from nearly 1000 miles away down in Dallas TX during the late 80s on occasion. It was often that I would pick up the relatively nearby stations of 100 to 150 miles just about every morning and sometimes even. Or even picking up FM stations from Florida in the Midwest. Now they've pretty much messed up the spectrum with Digital TV in addition I know people in this area who live in hilly areas that can pretty much forget about getting the local channels unless they subscribe to one of the cable networks or one of the satellite providers. Frankly it stinks.

At least we're closer to getting rid of that monstrosity called IBOC as many stations have abandoned it. Its about like the HD Radio craze that hit about oh what was it 2004 to 2007. Now you hardly hear about it. At least I can still do some AM DX and listen to the 50kw flamethrowers on AM. Really cool when you can pick up overseas AM from here in the Midwest. Anyway, new to the group here but been listening to AM, SW, HF for about 25 years or so.

[mr. mike]

Used to love to do TV DX back over the past 20 years or so. Now its hard enough to get decent signals from the local TV stations whose towers are only about 25 to 30 miles away without losing some of the signal. I recently moved to the semi country from an old inner ring suburb of my local 1 million population city. At that place, I would get about 30 channels but now its down to about 15. I remember getting DX TV from nearly 1000 miles away down in Dallas TX during the late 80s on occasion....

I second your idea; while I like some of the digital subchannels, there was something extremely cool in picking up a station in another town. I didn't mind that the TV would sometimes turn into a radio (or you would see a picture but hear no sound.) I was too much of a dumbass as a kid to ask my father to buy a signal booster (antenna amp); we could've gotten stuff from Las Vegas or Mexico City if the spectrum were willing.

Digital TV sucks because it can't take any bottoming-out of the signal. I have to use a signal booster to get in the locals now.

[jFarley]

I miss Captain Chesapeake here in Baltimore. And Count Gore de Vol hosting Creature Feature. Interesting television is long gone, I'm afraid.

I miss Captain Kangaroo!  Mom and Dad could always plop us kids in front of the tube, with the Captain on, assured of the fact that we were watching wholesome, educational, interesting programming such as:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=et6Jt2YX44o

[ka1iic]

Just gotta say I miss analog TV and picking up TV channel 2 on my Icom R75 on 59.750 MHZ a few years back.  Best TV DX I had was hearing a station located in Eastern Virginia.  Funny how the Sporadic-E was that day, I could hear two different stations by switching between a vertical and horizontal antenna, and only one station was audible on either antenna.

You an me both...  I remember back in the late 1950's when I was living in Gilford, Maine my brother and I would tune around the lower TV channels and receive stuff from all over the US.  Mostly from the east coast but one day we got a very solid signal from Texas...  The latter lasted about 10 minutes then a station from Rhode Island came booming in...

"Those were the days my friend... we thought they'd never end... "

73 vince ka1iic

[Mentholyptus]

When I was living in Michigan for a few years in 2005-2007, because it's so flat, I was picking up on my Sony Bravia 32" LCD set, 13 digital TV channels, plus another 25-28 analog channels from Michigan, Canada & Ohio... Using only a pair of rabbit ears bungee-corded horizontally to a vent in the wall near the ceiling! Now I live in NJ, analog TV is gone, I'm midway between Atlantic City & Philly, and too far from either to pick either up, so now I get nothing... Absolutely nothing on my TV!! And I refuse to pay for cable because its a waste, so I listen to shortwave, or watch YouTube or DVD/Blu-Ray. And I really don't miss it, but I do miss analog TV... Picking up 40 channels on your TV without cable?? Yeah, I can live with that...

[atrainradio]

I've done some research and have read that the LPTV movement is coming along and there are people trying to keep good ol' analog tv alive as best they can. Becuase as Mentholptus said Digital t.v sucks! I'm right next to philly and have problems picking up the signal even though im using a pro antenna

[sat_dxer]

"using a pro antenna"


a