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• (August 26, 2009, 11:50 pm)

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[FreeTV]

WMTV-DT (15.1 and 15.2) will be increasing power later this year (not June 12th).  We have ordered a new top-mount antenna for channel 19 that will be replacing our analog-15 antenna, and a higher-powered transmitter is being readied to ship to Madison that we are getting from another station in our company.  The antenna fabrication is scheduled to take about 24 weeks, and we're 4 weeks into the process.

There was an atmospheric inversion Monday night into Tuesday that caused us a lot of reception problems.  We had a viewer in Evansville, maybe 25 miles from the tower, pick up WGN-DT on "our" channel.  It's WGN's channel too, but normally they don't get out this far.  Most people that contacted us reported "weak signal" although it was likely interference.

Tom Weeden
Chief Engineer, WMTV-DT
Madison, WI
Amateur Radio WJ9H

[Webmaster]

Appreciate the quick and informative reply Tom.  Hopefully Madison viewers will see better results later this year.

[FreeTV]

8/14/09 Update -

WMTV's analog transmitter is now completely disassembled and out of our transmitter room, new electrical is going in.  Higher powered transmitter has arrived in Madison and will be delivered to our building soon.  New DTV channel 19 antenna is scheduled to be delivered in October.  We will be increasing from our current 56 kW ERP (horizontal polarization only) to 155 kW ERP, full circular polarization.

155 kW will be our ultimate power limit due to proximity to WGN/Chicago also on channel 19 and our in-town neighbor WHA on channel 20.