Have I found the "Gulf Coast of the North"?

[Robert Grant]

For the past several years, We (Myself, wife and daughter) have been renting a cabin near Manistique, MI (in the Upper Peninsula, near the North shore of Lake Michigan). In recent years, I started taking a TV, and later, digital tuners, along.
DX was sometimes pretty good (2006 excellent, 2007 very good, 2008 disappointing except one good opening), as the lowband channels (except 3) were clear, and the cabin was only about 3 miles from Lake Michigan.
This year was different, we took a house on US 2 only about 300' from Lake Michigan. There was very little Es, but the trop was fantastic. It started when I hooked up the Zenith DTT900 for a "test" - in the living room with the 2-bay indoor bowtie. First auto scan picked 16 (actual) channels, including several from Milwaukee and two from Chicago (WFLD and WPWR, 291 miles).
I put a 4-bay with my RDX laboratories UA-900 UHF preamp (that I won at WTFDA '93 and is the ONLY preamp I have been impressed with) onto a rear balcony and had great results. Half the nights, trop was wide open to the Chicago area. Even low power digitals made the trip (WHCH-LD, WBND-LP, and WYTU-LD).
The closest station, WJMN-DT 48, still only at 9.8 kW under STA, not only failed to cause any problem, I actually failed to log it despite trying! (taking the Zinwell portable kludge on trips closer to Escanaba showed it is in fact on).
WFQX, Cadillac, MI, made the switch from channel 47 to channel 32 while I was up there, allowing me to log two WFQXs, and WTTW 47 Chicago, that had previously been blocked by WFQX.
Other local observations: WYHD-LP (formerly W05CR), the 100-watt "Escanaba" LPTV construction permit that in reality would only serve Manistique, has still not been built (I'm not the least bit surprised!). W18CU (Sister Bay, WI - WPNE-PBS) and W40AN (Escanaba, WLUK-FOX) have converted to digital, but I could not see W14CE Escanaba (WLUC-NBC), which I had seen in past years, in analog nor digital (IMHO if I were WLUC I would certainly want to keep this one on the air!). W07DB, the WLUC translator in Marquette itself, is still on the air in analog. WZMQ (formerly WMQF) in Marquette is on the air in digital. They were the only DTV I could get when I was actually in Marquette, noted with 2-channel multicasts, both with an old movie. Cable systems are not carrying the station.
The most surprising logging was only 119 miles away. WPBN (7) essentially lost its channel home of 55 years to WOOD as a result of the digital transition, and their digital channel 7 transmitter is only 500 watts. I was unable to get a usable signal from them with my DTV kludge at only 9 miles (though I did get PSIP and pixellations). At Manistique, I got a meter reading on a channel 7 with amplified rabbit ears. I was moving the antenna around to see if I had WOOD or WLS. I was taken aback when WPBN popped up (complete with pixxelated NBC video that made it clear the box had not applied the channel 50 PSIP to the actual channel 7 being received). I would have thought for sure that any trop great enough to bring puny 500 watt WPBN would bring WOOD, WLS or WJBK strong enough to override them.
Which brings me to another question: As in years past (when analogs were still abundant on VHF), I saw little or no sign of VHF signals from Milwaukee or Chicago over Lake Michigan, much as I have had very little luck getting VHF stations from Buffalo over Lake Erie into Temperance. Is tropo over water far less effective at VHF then tropo over land? 6811

6812

[Waterfallguy59]

For the past several years, We (Myself, wife and daughter) have been renting a cabin near Manistique, MI (in the Upper Peninsula, near the North shore of Lake Michigan). In recent years, I started taking a TV, and later, digital tuners, along.
DX was sometimes pretty good (2006 excellent, 2007 very good, 2008 disappointing except one good opening), as the lowband channels (except 3) were clear, and the cabin was only about 3 miles from Lake Michigan.
This year was different, we took a house on US 2 only about 300' from Lake Michigan. There was very little Es, but the trop was fantastic. It started when I hooked up the Zenith DTT900 for a "test" - in the living room with the 2-bay indoor bowtie. First auto scan picked 16 (actual) channels, including several from Milwaukee and two from Chicago (WFLD and WPWR, 291 miles).
I put a 4-bay with my RDX laboratories UA-900 UHF preamp (that I won at WTFDA '93 and is the ONLY preamp I have been impressed with) onto a rear balcony and had great results. Half the nights, trop was wide open to the Chicago area. Even low power digitals made the trip (WHCH-LD, WBND-LP, and WYTU-LD).
The closest station, WJMN-DT 48, still only at 9.8 kW under STA, not only failed to cause any problem, I actually failed to log it despite trying! (taking the Zinwell portable kludge on trips closer to Escanaba showed it is in fact on).
WFQX, Cadillac, MI, made the switch from channel 47 to channel 32 while I was up there, allowing me to log two WFQXs, and WTTW 47 Chicago, that had previously been blocked by WFQX.
Other local observations: WYHD-LP (formerly W05CR), the 100-watt "Escanaba" LPTV construction permit that in reality would only serve Manistique, has still not been built (I'm not the least bit surprised!). W18CU (Sister Bay, WI - WPNE-PBS) and W40AN (Escanaba, WLUK-FOX) have converted to digital, but I could not see W14CE Escanaba (WLUC-NBC), which I had seen in past years, in analog nor digital (IMHO if I were WLUC I would certainly want to keep this one on the air!). W07DB, the WLUC translator in Marquette itself, is still on the air in analog. WZMQ (formerly WMQF) in Marquette is on the air in digital. They were the only DTV I could get when I was actually in Marquette, noted with 2-channel multicasts, both with an old movie. Cable systems are not carrying the station.
The most surprising logging was only 119 miles away. WPBN (7) essentially lost its channel home of 55 years to WOOD as a result of the digital transition, and their digital channel 7 transmitter is only 500 watts. I was unable to get a usable signal from them with my DTV kludge at only 9 miles (though I did get PSIP and pixellations). At Manistique, I got a meter reading on a channel 7 with amplified rabbit ears. I was moving the antenna around to see if I had WOOD or WLS. I was taken aback when WPBN popped up (complete with pixxelated NBC video that made it clear the box had not applied the channel 50 PSIP to the actual channel 7 being received). I would have thought for sure that any trop great enough to bring puny 500 watt WPBN would bring WOOD, WLS or WJBK strong enough to override them.
Which brings me to another question: As in years past (when analogs were still abundant on VHF), I saw little or no sign of VHF signals from Milwaukee or Chicago over Lake Michigan, much as I have had very little luck getting VHF stations from Buffalo over Lake Erie into Temperance. Is tropo over water far less effective at VHF then tropo over land? 6811

6812

Rob: When you said you were 9 miles from WPBN, were you near the Caberfae / Harrietta transmitter; or the M-72 TC transmitter ?

With the dense forest up there, terrain,and the digital flakiness - I'm not surprised with the reception problems. I wonder why WPBN didn't take and swap transmitters with WTOM, so Ch 7 could be used in the Mackinac Bridge, Gaylord, & the Soo areas - and Ch 35 would be for the TC/Cadillac areas.

Joe

[Robert Grant]

The Caberfae / Harrietta transmitter (per databases, which I believe to be correct, the M-72 TC transmitter has the channel 50 transmitter, whereas harrietta had the powerful analog transmitter, now has the 500-watt STA, and is proposed to take a 15kW translator on 50).

Your idea would have been interesting, though WTOM would have had to move its transmitter to Goetzvillle to co-exist with WGTQ. I don't know if channel 7 would have been available on the American side. Now, the channel is protected for "future" Canadian stations in Wawa, Elliot Lake and Thunder Bay.
Now that Canada has announced that Northern Ontario will be pay-TV-only, I wonder if Canada will allow US stations on all those unused channels.
It is WLUC that could really use a high-VHF channel. Transmitting UHF from the center of the Superior Upland Plateau heats up a bunch of trees and misses all of the population centers, small as they are.

What would have made sense would be for WOOD to have gone UHF, allowing WPBN to use channel 7. BOTH would have benefitted. WOOD with its flatter terrain, larger budget, larger and more urban popuation (more rabbit ears) with UHF, whereas WPBN would have been able to use its existing antenna on channel 7 to serve its rural audience in rolling terrain who already had (if not pay-TV) outdoor antennas aimed in the general direction of Harrietta/Tustin (WWTV). And we all know that Barrington is desperate to save a buck.

[Robert Grant]

Just returned from vacation on Saturday (only one week this time) in Manistique, on Lake Michigan, near its northern end.
The lake tropo directly at the lakeshore continued to impress as it did last year, with Milwaukee stations literally being semi-locals at about 213 miles, their digital stations at times being seen solid with a 6" whip antenna indoors!, Chicago stations (about 289 miles) also seen several times as well. Needless to say, my temporary rig with the 4-bay and RDX preamp gave more frequent DX and brought in both analog and digital LP stations, and also WCCU 26, again, my best trop from last year. The rig can be set up or dismantled from the balcony in about 2 minutes.
"Escanaba" (actually Manistique) LPTV W05CR still not built (no surprise there), and WJMN still operating its temporary facility in north Esky whilst the Trenary tower still sports a channel 3 batwing array at its top (with WGLQ 97.1 just below it - see photo).
Few new stations were logged, however. I had hoped that stations even further South by tropo over terrain would "link" to the lake tropo, possibly allowing even greater DX, as the shape of Lake Michigan would reduce interference by "filtering out" DTVs from other directions not able to trop over the lake.
Sadly, I'll never know. The "Manistique East" log is being permanently retired, as the owner of the house is retiring and will make the house his all-summer home, no longer renting it out. Next year I may restart the Indian Lake log (2003-08) or even the Platte Lake log (not visited since 1999).