Quote:
Originally posted by Jeffhs
Rob,
I asked this question once before in another post, but it must have gotten lost or was never posted to the forum in the first place. You mentioned in one of your posts that you do not have cable. I am wondering what stations you can receive in your area with an antenna.
Also, what type of TV antenna installation and receivers do you have? I remember reading in one of your previous posts that you had a high-gain antenna, with a rotor, atop a 100-foot tower. I also seem to remember you mentioning that you have a private cable system in your house. As to TV sets, I have seen pictures of your old ones, such as, IIRC, a Zenith 21" roundie console, et al. You have that set working like it was new, if it is the one I remember.
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Jeff,
I have a 40 foot tower up one side of the house with a rotor and an all VHF-UHF yagi antenna like a channelmaster or something. It is about 12 feet long. I found it like new at the local landfill site. Deal! I installed a Radio Shack head amp on it. RG-6 down the tower into the basement where I have a 12 dB gain block to overcome the house cabling and splitter box losses. The splitters (buried unnaccessible innthe ceiling are VHF only (I think) so the top UHF channel available except on DX'ing is attenuated into the noise a bit.
Unfortunately where I point towards Toronto/Buffalo my antenna looks right through a huge oak tree's foliage and then right at a 40KV 3 phase HV power pole crossbar. The insulators make all sorts of noise when it is damp sometimes. You can watch as just one, or two, sometimes all three phases start to buzz on the screen. Luckily this doesn't happen too often.
I am in a DX'er's dream location. At 1620 feet I am on a high, flat plateau near the highest elevation in Ontario, NW of Toronto. When I look SE, S, or SW I have the elevation advantage. There is a big dropoff south of me towards Lake Ontario. I am about 120 miles LOS to Buffalo and the CN tower in Toronto is right in the same azimuth direction at about 70 milers(?) so without moving the rotor I get Toronto stations, Buffalo stations and a few others too.
Here's what I see pointed at Toronto.
2 US station (usually poor except when inversion )
3 CKVR Barrie (in rear lobe of antenna 50 miles away to the NorthEast). (VG)
4 US station, usually poor except when inversion)
5 CBC Toronto boresight (EXC).
7 Glowball (snowy) (Poor)
9 CTV Toronto boresight (EXC+)
11 CHCH Hamilton, a bit west of boresight (Poor)
17 TVO Toronto (EXC)
18 WNED PBS Buffalo boresight (varies Poor to VG)
23 Buffalo boresight (varies poor to G)
29 Buffalo boresight (varies poor to G)
41 Glowball Toronto boresight (EXC+)
49 Buffalo boresight (usually poor, sometimes G)
57 CITY _TV Boresight (G but in house coax losses prevent it from being better)
I can get the UHF station in Rochester and I seem to recall I got a Rochester VHF clear as local once when CBC 5 was off the air due to power outage in the CN Tower downtown Toronto.
As I said I just put up a 100 foot tower and will be able to place a large antenna at 55 feet. This will be UHF only and will get away from the big oak tree and the power pole problem. It should be awesome.
You can see my TV antenna tower to the left in this photo. I put up a tower on the south side of the house and strung a SW listening antenna across to the TV tower. Four feet above the SW longwire I have a #8 AWG copper ground protection wire. The TV antenna has a lightning rod above it and the rotor is bypassed with #1/0 copper welding cable flex loop. #1/0 runs from this all the way to the ground where two 10 foot lightning rods will discharge the current safely. Same two rod earthing setup and heavy copper down the tower on the south tower also. My house is well protected against a lightning hit!
That south tower is pulled over in this photo but I now have a single guy wire on it pulling it straight.