Hello from Canada!

[Garth J]

Hi there,

My name is Garth and I'm a DXer from Markham, Ontario, Canada (which is just outside of Toronto.) I've been a casual DXer since I was a kid (loved seeing what I could get with a variety of rabbit ears and other indoor antennas.) It was the DTV transition that got me interested in antenna reception again (I was astonished you could get a perfect picture from a digital signal!) So what started out as curiosity in 2008 turned into a full on obsession with DTV DXing in 2009. (Part of my curiosity was just to see if I could pick up all the distant stations I knew in analog in their DTV form.)

In just the past year I've been able to log 50 unique digital signals (that's not counting stations that moved from one channel to another post-transition.) My local reception is generally Toronto and Buffalo, NY stations. Rochester, NY & Erie, PA come in most frequently via tropo. I've also seen stations from Syracuse, NY / Utica, NY / Watertown, NY / Detroit, MI / Cleveland, OH and other cities.

My longest distance record came during the Aug 24-25 tropo event, in which I picked up Chicago's WMAQ with full decode for about 2 minutes! WMAQ (RF29) is 446 miles away from me! Other "odd" events included picking up WBNS (RF21) from Columbus, OH, and recently this month I got WLLA (RF45) briefly from Kalamazoo, MI! This month also brought my first look at stations from Flint, MI! (This month had some neat unusual openings to Michigan on two occasions for my area!)

Another exciting event this past Summer was getting the digital signal of Erie, PA's WICU on RF12. WICU is the first station I remember seeing as a kid (circa 1987) and realizing something "different" could come in on the same channel number. (Normally I would see Peterborough, ONT's CHEX-TV on Ch. 12.) So I count WICU as my first realization that you could pick up new channels from far distances!

I have a blog where I post about my reception, and I have a channel guide with pics of all the stations I've received here:

http://tvgarth.blogspot.com/2009/10/main-channel-guide.html

It's organized by virtual channel number and also includes shots of some of my analog E-Skip reception.

Very glad to be a part of the WTFDA! :)

[Danny]

Welcome.

You have a lot of nice DX pictures.

[H Hayes PA]

Garth;
Welcome to the club. You have a great web site. I especially like the "play" on the TV Guide logo. It looks like you're in a great location.

[spunker88]

You are in a great location, I am right across the big pong (Lake Ontario) and it provides a great surface for dxing. I havent tried TV, i need a better antenna, but on FM I have pulled in Toronto, Rochester, and even a few Buffalo stations. Im closest to Watertown, and also get Syracuse stations on a regular basis.

Have you tried to see if you can get WPBS-TV from watertown. Its on digital 41 I believe with a PSIP on 16. I see you got WWTI which is lower powered than WPBS. I can tell its recent since its the myabc50 logo instead of newswatch 50, which was abandoned in september.

You also got WWNY, they are a pretty high powered VHF station. They did just launch their sister station WNYF in HD on 35, PSIP 28.1. Its low powered but is off the same tower as WWNY, so you may pick it up in tropo is you are aimed that way.

Great collection of pictures...

[Garth J]

Thank you for the welcome, guys! :)

@ Danny - that's quite a compliment, as you have some of the best DX pics out there! I love your site and especially your June 12th E-skip pics of WPVI going from analog to digital! Great photos and documentation of pre and post transition DTV, plus all the neat analog logos too! (I wish I'd thought about documenting more of my DXing from the analog era, but it wasn't until this past year I even thought to pick up my camera and take pics!)

@ H Hayes PA - Thanks so much for checking out my site (glad you liked the blog and noticed the logo! I've loved TV Guide since I was a kid, especially their channel guides, so I definitely wanted to play off of that!) My location is really lucky as I have LOS to Toronto and Buffalo DTV, plus I seem to get pretty darn good reception without even having my antenna on the roof. It's a modest setup, but it works!

@ spunker88 - Thanks for checking out my pics! The funny thing is Watertown was actually the hardest for me to pull in this past Summer (I used to pick up Watertown more frequently in analog when I lived in Scarborough, Ontario which is only 15-20 min away from where I live now.) I got WWNY only once in mid-August for about 15 min, and WWTI only for a few seconds. You're right about the Myabc50 logo being recent! It was only this past Sept that WWTI came in long enough for me to capture their logo, and it was only about a week after they switched to the new one. So far, I haven't been able to get WPBS or WNYF-HD as they're blocked by locals on the same channels. Though I saw on William Hepburn's site that he picked up WPBS and he's only 33 miles from Global TV Toronto which broadcasts on 41! But you're right...the lake is amazing for helping signals travel! That's neat that you've picked up FM stations from all those cities!

Enjoying the site and the monthly digests very much!

[spunker88]

Thank you for the welcome, guys! :)

@ Danny - that's quite a compliment, as you have some of the best DX pics out there! I love your site and especially your June 12th E-skip pics of WPVI going from analog to digital! Great photos and documentation of pre and post transition DTV, plus all the neat analog logos too! (I wish I'd thought about documenting more of my DXing from the analog era, but it wasn't until this past year I even thought to pick up my camera and take pics!)

@ H Hayes PA - Thanks so much for checking out my site (glad you liked the blog and noticed the logo! I've loved TV Guide since I was a kid, especially their channel guides, so I definitely wanted to play off of that!) My location is really lucky as I have LOS to Toronto and Buffalo DTV, plus I seem to get pretty darn good reception without even having my antenna on the roof. It's a modest setup, but it works!

@ spunker88 - Thanks for checking out my pics! The funny thing is Watertown was actually the hardest for me to pull in this past Summer (I used to pick up Watertown more frequently in analog when I lived in Scarborough, Ontario which is only 15-20 min away from where I live now.) I got WWNY only once in mid-August for about 15 min, and WWTI only for a few seconds. You're right about the Myabc50 logo being recent! It was only this past Sept that WWTI came in long enough for me to capture their logo, and it was only about a week after they switched to the new one. So far, I haven't been able to get WPBS or WNYF-HD as they're blocked by locals on the same channels. Though I saw on William Hepburn's site that he picked up WPBS and he's only 33 miles from Global TV Toronto which broadcasts on 41! But you're right...the lake is amazing for helping signals travel! That's neat that you've picked up FM stations from all those cities!

Enjoying the site and the monthly digests very much!

Yea, WNYF-HD is low powered at 15kw so I doubt youd be able to get it, but then again WWTI is 25kw.
WPBS is currently 40kw but it looks like they have FCC approval to raise their power to 59kw.

I havent gotten in to TV dxing so I dont have much to share with you.
I do a lot of AM Dxing since im in a pretty good area for that. A lot of channels are regulars here, Ottawa, Quebec, Toronto, New York City, Chicago are all relatively close and fill up about 2/3 of the AM spectrum for me. On the rest of it, I like to listen for distant or low powered station IDs.

[Danny]

Many thanks, Garth.

Jeff Kruszka, "Photo News" editor of VUD, encouraged me to take photographs of my TV DX years ago.

Help and advice from WTFDAers have contributed greatly to my DXing over the years.