TV Frequency & Marker Chart
March 1963 Radio-Electronics

March 1963 Radio-Electronics [Table of Contents] Wax nostalgic about and learn from the history of early electronics. See articles from Radio-Electronics, published 1930-1988. All copyrights hereby acknowledged.

Your search is finally over. That "TV Frequency & Marker Chart" you've been having such a hard time finding is right here in black and white. That's right, now while you are tuning that VHF / UHF television for the best possible reception of both audio and video, simply cross reference the channel number with the corresponding audio carrier and video carrier frequencies and you're good to go. Be sure to have your test probe at the proper "looker point" in the circuit, or you might be tuning for the wrong waveform. Thank Radio-Electronics magazine for the favor. Of course I'm kidding; almost nobody needs this kind of information anymore. But, there are still a few hobbyists who restore and service those old sets. By the way, I don't ever recall hearing of the term "looker point" when referring to a test point. You?

TV Frequency & Marker Chart

By Don Dudley

When making a quick check for TV tuner alignment, a list of channel frequencies and their video and sound carriers will come in handy.

Each channel is 6 mc wide, and the video carrier in each is 1.25 mc above the low limit. There is the standard 4.5 mc between video and sound carriers. This places the sound carrier 0.25 mc below the high-frequency limit of the channel. The sweep picture as seen at the looker point (rf test point) is shown in Fig. 1.

Those who doubt the accuracy of their markers can use the transmitted sound and video carriers by using the hookup in Fig. 2. Use a resistance value that gives a clear undistorted marker.

Fig. 1 - The waveform at the TV tuner looker point.

Fig. 2 - With this arrangement you can use TV station signals as markers.

Posted May 1, 2023