Doug (drh4683),
Thanks for the information. Holy mackerel, is that ever an impressive list of stations! You aren't kidding when you say your area has "tons" of UHF stations, and the VHF dial being packed as well in good weather conditions.
The area to which you are moving seems to be about the same distance from Chicago as I was from Cleveland, before I moved to my apartment out here in the boondocks over four years ago. I lived in a Cleveland suburb called Wickliffe, which is in Lake County, Ohio about 15 miles from downtown (and over thirty miles from the Cleveland TV transmitters, which are located southwest of downtown; where I live now, I am 45 miles southwest of the transmitters and need cable to get decent reception--I cannot even get one channel [NBC channel 3] on an antenna here, although 5 and 8, and the four commercial UHF stations, 19, 25, 43, 55, 61, come in well enough [in monochrome] to watch, but not good enough in color, although, ironically, the four commercial UHF stations, one of which [19] is the CBS affiliate for northern Ohio, *do* come in almost as clear as if I were within a few miles of the transmitters, instead of 45 miles away).
I now live in Fairport Harbor, Ohio, which is a village in east-central Lake County located 30 miles east of downtown Cleveland and about a mile (more or less) from the south shore of Lake Erie. While my TV reception on an antenna is not as good as it was when I lived in the suburbs, my FM radio reception here is great! Using an amplified indoor FM antenna on my Aiwa bookshelf stereo, I get almost all the Cleveland stations with excellent signals; in the summer, my FM dial just lights up with all sorts of stations from Detroit (both in the city and its suburbs as far out as Ann Arbor), southwestern Ontario, Canada, Toledo, Ohio, and, when the conditions are exactly right, Erie, Pennsylvania.
I guess being so far away from the Cleveland FMs means having less intermod, allowing me to hear stations I would not have ordinarily known were there. My area (where I live now) is actually almost exactly between Cleveland and Ashtabula, Ohio; I remember reading somewhere in an old electronics magazine (Popular Electronics, IIRC) that if you live in the suburbs of a major city, or between two cities, you are likely to hear just about anything on AM or FM radio, especially the latter. I remember one summer about 34 years ago (I was still living in the suburbs at the time) when one of the local Cleveland FMs was knocked off the air. While I was waiting for the station to sign back on, I left the dial on the local station's frequency (107.9 MHz) and was amazed to hear a station from West Palm Beach, Florida, booming in--in stereo, yet--every bit as well as any of the locals from Cleveland, and I was listening on an AM/FM stereo portable radio with a telescoping whip antenna.
Here are my area's "local" stations, all from Cleveland (also carried on Comcast digital cable, which I have here). All except three (the ones listed in Akron, Ohio) broadcast from maximum-power transmitters and towers located in the Cleveland suburb of Parma, some 20 miles west of downtown.
Channel 3----------WKYC, NBC
Channel 5----------WEWS, ABC
Channel 8----------WJW, FOX (was CBS until about 10 yrs ago)
Channel 19--------WOIO, CBS (was Fox until abt. 10 years ago; swapped networks with channel 8)
Channel 25--------WVIZ, PBS
Channel 43--------WUAB, UPN
Channel 55--------WBNX, Warner Bros. Network
Channel 61--------WQHS, Univision (Spanish)--was WCLQ subscription TV (early '80s) and Kaiser Broadcasting WKBF (late '60s-early '80s)
On cable, I also get the following stations from the city of Akron, Ohio which is some 70 miles south of where I live now and 50 miles south of my previous residence:
Channel 23---------WVPX, Pax (was ABC WAKC and WAKR-TV until about seven years ago)
Channel 49-------WEAO, PBS (basically duplicates programs of PBS WVIZ Cleveland)
Channel 67-------WOAC, Akron/Canton, Ohio (Home Shopping, something like HSN was before it pulled its programming off broadcast TV and went to cable exclusively a few years ago)
My channel list is nowhere near as extensive as yours, but then again, metropolitan Cleveland is a smaller television market than greater Chicago. The Cleveland area's NBC affiliate, WKYC, was operated by NBC twice in the last 50-odd years--the first time from 1948 until 1955, then Westinghouse bought the station and operated it until 1965 (as KYW-AM and TV, with KYW-FM being little more than a license at the time for an FM on 105.7 MHz which never materialized), then the FCC forced NBC to buy the station (along with its companion AM and FM radio operations) back in 1965. The stations were then known as WKYC-AM, FM and TV and were broadcasting from a studio building on 6th Street in downtown Cleveland. The three stations were operated by NBC (again), and were affiliates of the (now defunct) NBC radio network from 1965 until 1970 or thereabouts (the network tried to make a top-40 powerhouse 50kW rock station of WKYC-AM, referring to the station as "KY-11", during this five-year period, but failed miserably; the FM was an afterthought and had automated easy-listening music, with NBC radio news at the top of every hour and an old NBC Radio variety program called "The Monitor Beacon" on weekends, over the same period; this program, and NBC radio news, were simulcast over WKYC-AM as well--in fact, it was the other way around; the FM simulcast the AM programming on weekends.)
WKYC-TV (now known simply as WKYC--the AM and FM stations were sold off several times since NBC unloaded them almost 35 years ago and are now known as WTAM-AM [the station's first-held "heritage" call sign, dating back to when the station first went on the air in 1923] and WMJI-FM, Majic Oldies 105.7) is an affiliate of the NBC television network, as it has been since it first went on the air in 1948.
I apologize for being so long-winded, Doug, but I've had a lifelong interest in radio and TV (I'm also an amateur radio operator [WB8NHV--my callsign, which also appears after my name in my profile signature], as I have been since 1972) and know the history of most of the major radio and TV stations in Cleveland. When I get started talking or writing about that, or anything connected with it, I have an awfully difficult time stopping.
Good luck with your move to Batavia, IL. I've heard of the town, but don't know much about it beyond what you mentioned in your post. It's a good thing you have all your TVs in storage for now; you're probably going to have enough of a job moving your furniture without having to worry about dozens of TV sets of all sizes besides. I know what it's like to move, as I had a big job on my hands (which, I assure you, I will not soon forget!) when I moved from Wickliffe, Ohio to my present apartment in Fairport Harbor. I brought almost everything I owned with me, and wound up throwing out much of it when I got here as my apartment isn't that big (one bedroom). As it is, my furniture takes up most of the room in the apartment itself, with the rest of it (including my bedroom set and my ham radio setup) in the bedroom. But I'm not complaining--in fact, I wanted to live here. I spent 40 years of my life in the city (I'm almost 48 now) and have always wanted to live in a small town, which is why I moved to this village of 3,180 population (according to the 2000 census) just about four and a half years ago.
I think you'll like living in an area which is more rural than where you are now. That the Batavia area is flatter (as you said in your post) than your present residence (Downers Grove) means your over-the-air TV reception will be better, as there will be fewer obstructions between your antenna and the stations you want to receive, not to mention less noise, interference, etc.
Just out of curiosity, how far is Batavia from downtown Chicago? You said Downers Grove is about 18 miles from the center of town, and Batavia is about 20 miles west of Downers Grove. Where would that place Batavia in relation to Chicago? My best guess would be about 38 miles. Good thing you'll be putting up another big antenna, as you'll be in something of a near fringe area for Chicago television/FM reception. However, as flat as you say the Batavia area is, you shouldn't have any trouble getting the Chicago stations with your new antenna.
Again, Doug, I wish you the best of luck when you move in June. At least you'll be moving in the summer, which is to be preferred, IMO, over having to move a house full of furniture in winter, in the middle of a blizzard. I moved to my present apartment in late autumn 1999; believe me, that wasn't the best sort of weather to be making a move across a county [even though Lake County, where I live, is the smallest of Ohio's 88 counties], even though it was only 12 miles! There wasn't much snow the day I arrived here, but it was cold as any iceberg--the wind whipping in off Lake Erie, the south shore of which is just a mile or so from my apartment, didn't help matters much either.
Kind regards,