Local PBS channel "flashes" in and out

Playground Antenna Help
#1

I use an OTA Antenna to pull in my local channels. It is the original 30+ year old aerial mounted on my roof, about 20 feet off the ground... and since I live in the flattest part of North America (the Red River Valley on the ND/MN border), I can pull in all the local stations. The antenna works well, especially after (3 summers ago) I replaced all the external coaxial cable going to the antenna with new cables (the old coax was in awful shape and I suspect cracks in the outer cable might have been causing some issues before then).

The current, but intermittent, issue is with my local PBS station where attempts to view one of its "subchannels" (13.2) SOMETIMES cause the video to repeatedly fade to black and back to normal video repeatedly with about a 1 to 2 Hertz rate. It is NOT the same as the breakup of signal when I have a "weak tuner signal". I get no "weak tuner signal", just a flashing video image. Often, the signal is clean, as it happens to be today.

Any ideas from anyone as to possible causes and preferably ways to fix it? In particular, its intermittency is annoying.

#2

Its probably just the station having issues. I'd probably contact the station as this doesn't seem to be a hardware or Channels issue.

Sometimes stations have a muck up too. I remember mine (WPBT) had a frozen image all day on all of their channels. That was weird :rofl::joy:

#3

If you have the HDHomeRun app or a TV connected to your antenna, you could cross-verify with those.

#4

Not sure what you mean by "cross-verify", but I do use an HDHomeRun in my setup (I didn't connect the antenna directly to the TV).

#5

It was a problem that has persisted for months which is why I didn't think it was the station... but maybe.

#6

Yeah...its probably the station. But try using an antenna with your TV to check to make sure but when weird things happen to a station over here, I usually assume its the station and not my antenna as i get everything with ease with an indoor antenna

#7

I meant when you see the issue in Channels to;

  1. check the channel using your TV with an antenna connected to its tuner
  2. check the channel using the HDHR app (but that would use an additional HDHR tuner)
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