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The Latest News
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Mar. 11th. As previously mentioned, our major problems have come from the Anik F2's T31 transponder,
though all of the Anik F2 satellite is slowly failing. Despite the satellite being the source of the problem,
we have continued to look for ways to mitigate the problem, even if it's only temporary. By making some rahter "unorthodox" changes to our Anik F2 antenna, we have been able to restore night-time operation of
TLC, Food and HGTV. How long this cure will last, we do not know. But, if it fails again, down the road,
we will try something else, of that you can be assured.
However, we then discovered we had a problem on Ch. 16 with intermittent, garbled sound. Now 16's
three networks (PBS, ABC & NBC) also come from Anik F2, but this time it's Transponder 8. But, several
other networks, on other channels, also come from T8 and they do not have the problem, so in this case it
was us, not the satellite.
This evening it got particularly bad and it turned out that the Channel 16 Mux was overloading. We've never
seen one do that before! So, the natural thing to do was to swap it out, which we we did. But, it did not fix
the problem. In the end we were able to limit some bandwidth in our multi-channel receivers & the mux is
no longer overloading.
We realize that all of this meant some interruptions during the Oscars, for which apologize. But as of
about 8:30 pm, we had all channlels operating normally, both in picture and sound. Just in time for the
three big announcements!
If you find you cannot receive Ch. 16, or if your TV is showing spurrious channels, like 16.101 or
34.106, please run the channle search found in the menus of your TV. These are artifacts of
replacing a multiplexer, and a channel search is the cure.
We hope things continue working, but we are in uncharted territory with Anik F2's problems. If they
recur, you can rest assured that our volunteers will work on it to the very best of our ability.
As always, we appreciate your patience and understanding.
Thanks for reading.