Thin-Air ATSC: Crystal Ball Transition Assistance From The FCC

My planned Stateside return from an in-progress Taiwan trip will roughly coincide with the planned shut-off date for full-power NTSC transmissions in the United States, June 12. And, as the Federal Communications Committee and even the U.S. President himself have recently suggested, further delays in this transition are not anticipated. Long-time readers of Brian’s Brain already know that I’ve spent the last 11 months struggling (and ultimately, knock on wood, succeeding) to obtain robust ATSC reception at my high-altitude home office, an odyssey which I’ve documented in a series of blog posts that recently appeared in abridged print form (with several online addendums to date).

As such, I was curious to check out a recently released online utility developed by the FCC which purports to predict what your ATSC reception situation will look like in less than a week’s time. Here’s what it spat back at me after I entered my address:

The results were mixed. KRXI (Fox) is definitely my consistently strongest primary tower transmission, with KRNV (NBC) close behind it. KTVN (CBS) is hit-and-miss, which is why I recently switched from the primary beacon to a local translator. But speaking of translators, the FCC tool doesn’t seem to comprehend them, instead only providing primary-signal information from its database. That means, for example, that KNPB (PBS) isn’t listed as a valid station I can receive, even though I’m able to pull in the Verdi-area translator beacon under most atmospheric conditions.

And speaking of pulling in beacons, I need to adopt a wait-and-see perspective on the FCC utility’s feedback regarding KOLO (ABC). Right now, I’m unable to access the primary signal coming from Slide Mountain:

reportedly because of inconsistencies in the transmitting antenna’s supposedly omni-directional pattern. However, KOLO plans to migrate its ATSC transmission from channel 9 to 8 in the coming days; presumably, the FCC’s gain/loss map for the station:

reflects the post-migration predicted result. As such, I may be able to quit tapping into the occasionally flaky Verdi translator signal.

Stay tuned for a follow-up report once I’m able to test KOLO’s primary ATSC signal in its new spectrum residence. Granted, the new FCC online tool is no TV Fool, but it’s also more understandable by the non-tech masses as a result…conversely, its provided data is a whole lot more meaningful than AntennaWeb’s scant stats. How accurate is the FCC data for your location?