Update: They lasted for months, but the two Grand Junction stations are off Galaxy 17 now.

Original Post: For the first time in a very long while, a couple of over-the-air TV stations are broadcasting on FTA Ku-band satellite. Unlike the occasional weekend test, which I never bother to mention, this pair has been up for over three weeks, so there’s a chance they’ll still be there when you read this.

Sister stations KREX and KFQX, the CBS and Fox affiliates of Grand Junction CO, are loud and clear on Galaxy 17 (91° West). They remind me of the glory days of FTA, when plenty of stations carrying football games were in the clear. Now almost anyone who really wants to see more football can subscribe to a streaming package, but it’s nice to see out-of-market stations anyway.

If you want a taste of Grand Junction, you should try pointing your FTA dish at Galaxy 17 right away. There’s no telling how long these stations will remain available. As with all FTA channels, they’re fun while they last.

A Cuban dance band performing at WTVJ Miami

This was supposed to be just the story of how I found nine NBC-owned broadcast TV stations in the clear on my free-to-air dish. But then my system acted up a little, so now it’s also about my satellite foibles.

It all started when I noticed a fresh note at Ricks Satellite Forum that said that certain NBC stations had popped up at certain hours on AMC 15, the satellite at 105 degrees west. I told my dish to move over to check, and those channels came in, but their signal was erratic. Hmm. As a test, I told the dish to switch over to another satellite, and the motor stopped halfway there.

One of the challenges of setting up a FTA dish system is that there are several parts that all have to be good for it to work. In this case, the motor had been installed just a couple of months earlier, so I doubted that was the problem. Instead, I guessed that the signal up the cable from my FTA receiver to the motor wasn’t getting through consistently. I checked the connections all the way from the receiver to the switch outside, all good. That outside cable had been bumped around lately, so I ordered a replacement cable.

When the winter weather cleared up enough for me to try it, I installed my brand-new quad-shield cable in place of the old one. That was a letdown; it didn’t change anything. Hmm. Next I wondered whether it might be the switch, since DiSEqC switches don’t last forever. As a test, I bypassed it; still no motor movement. Just for grins, I checked the short cable connections at the motor and found I could tighten one just a half-rotation. One more try, and now everything’s perfect again. It was yet another reminder that sometimes the simplest things are the ones that count, and when a satellite system starts acting funny, check absolutely every connection.

Back to those stations, which I most commonly see during daylight hours. They are the NBC-owned broadcasters in Boston, Connecticut, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Miami, Dallas, San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. (The transponder is 11880-V, SR 30000 if you’re playing along at home.) Their arrival just before the Super Bowl and Winter Olympics might be a coincidence, or it might mean that they’ll go away soon after the games are over. For however long it lasts, it’s been pretty nifty to sample all that local programming.