Martin,  How far are you from Moore?  Also are things finally drying out
there yet?  I was amazed last week in central Kansas as it was as wet as
I have ever seen it this time of year.  On the other hand I have not
been back in June since 2000.   



-----
BRETT WINCHESTER
[log in to unmask] 
208-639-8386
###


-----Original Message-----
From: For blind ham radio operators
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Martin McCormick
Sent: Thursday, June 21, 2007 1:50 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: East of the pond

Brett Winches writes:
> One date   I have heard bandied about is February 10 (or something) of
> 2009.  the feds are supposed to have a plan to assist consumers but 
> who really knows what that will be or whether it will come along in 
> time? =20

	You are very close. It is supposed to be February 17 of 2009. If
you have a TV hooked up to an outdoor antenna that can't receive
digital, you will supposedly just get snow after Midnight comes for
February 18, 2009.

	If you are on cable, nothing will happen. Actually, it may
already have happened or will happen soon. The cable companies are
quietly changing the way they deliver your local channels so that you
will still get them after 2009. Most are either converting the digital
channel in to analog and retransmitting that signal down your cable, or
they are buying the same local feed that you can get if you subscribe to
Dish Network or DirectTV. They then convert that in to an analog signal
and feed it down the cable on the same channel you would get over the
air.

	So, you are already maybe getting the digital feed. You can
sometimes tell if it is satellite over the cable if you can listen to
the audio over the air at the same time you are getting it through the
cable. If there is a delay of a couple of seconds, it is probably a
satellite system. If the audio pretty well matches both the cable and
air pickup, then it is probably still being simply fed as is in to the
cable via the head-end antenna.

	As an example, our cable system in Stillwater, Oklahoma which is
about 50 miles from Oklahoma City and 70 miles from Tulsa, uses a
satellite link for the one Tulsa channel and seems to still be using
off-the-air pickup for all the Oklahoma City channels.

Martin McCormick WB5AGZ  Stillwater, OK Systems Engineer OSU Information
Technology Department Network Operations Group