Early color sets in... Escanaba?

[benman94]

Originally Posted by electronjohn

What about Duluth? IIRC KDAL Ch3 went on in 1954.

Duluth may have been impossible. 405 kilometers, 251 miles, as the crow flies between Duluth and Escanaba. Not to mention the Porcupine Mountains being right in the middle of them.

I recently read a paper by a member of the American Geophysical Union that suggests that the presence of mafic and ultramafic minerals in bedrock can tremendously alter the ground plane as "seen" by a transmitting or receiving antenna. It actually explains a lot of my own experiences given how common BIFs are in the western Upper Peninsula, and how much of the far western UP is essentially a huge basalt and gabbro escarpment.

Radio and TV reception is great in the more felsic eastern UP. As you head west though, TV and radio reception begins to suffer, despite the rugged terrain not being substantially different in terms of height above average terrain than the east.

The Keweenaw is probably the most striking example of this phenomenon IMO. In Copper Harbor, you can not receive the TV station in Calumet, 40-50 miles away tops. FM reception in Copper Harbor also peters away to nothing.

None of this would alter reception in Escanaba appreciably, but it helps explain why reception of Marquette stations can be spotty even relatively close in Escanaba.