UNC TV has posted an online video explaining its tower situation and why its DTV transition didn’t go smoothly. It turns out when Congress delayed the original February cutover date WUNC lost its commitment with its tower crew. Therefore it will have to wait until the crew can get back around to switching antennas off its Chatham county tower.
Update 23 Aug 2009: UNC is now back at full power!
That’s great that they’ve finally come out with an easy to understand explanation. I wish, however, that they’d been very upfront about this from the beginning. It’s quite obvious just looking at the situation that there were going to be problems and it would have been nice if they’d preemptively attacked this.
Oh, btw, interestingly enough, my free antenna from WRAL came today. They sent me a Channel Master 4228HD! This thing is HUGE!!! ( http://www.crutchfield.com/S-G1AAtV8lSC9/p_6594228HD/Channel-Master-4228HD.html ) Now I just need to figure out which way to point it (and whether or not I’ll be able to get enough signal from WUNC (once they get squared away) so as not to need a second antenna pointing towards them (since I don’t think my attic is big enough for an antenna rotor.
You got an antenna from WRAL too, right? Which one was it?
No, I haven’t taken advantage of WRAL’s antenna program. I need to, though, as the towers I need to point towards are in two different directions.
Go to AntennaWeb to find out what compass readings you need for your location. Or better yet: as you’re a Linux user and a HAM, you’ll love using Splat! to do terrain analyses between transmitters and receivers.
Splat! takes a little setup (you have to download the terrain files from USGS, for example) but once it’s working it’s an amazing tool. In fact, I need to check this newest version out because it’s gotten even cooler than I remember it!
As for UNC-TV, you’re right: this could not have been a surprise for them. And that would have been fine had the public been given some warning.
Thanks for the recommendations for AntennaWeb and Splat! http://dtv.gov has some good info too, like, say this: http://www.fcc.gov/bureaus/mb/engineering/maps/index.html?zipCode=27713
Oh, and btw, on a separate topic, can I please say that your site REALLY needs a way to be notified of replies by email! I remembered to come back to see if you had replied, but I think you’re losing out on a lot of great conversations because people don’t know the conversation is happening!