anyone ever experiment with antennas before?

Status
Please reply by conversation.

htownjoe

SatelliteGuys Pro
Original poster
May 7, 2007
163
0
splendora tx
i know we are satellite guys in here and have a passion for satellites,but i was wondering if any of you have ever played with the uhf antennas before? i was reading about it and there are lots of websites about dx and such. some of these people claim to pick up channels as far as 10000 miles away! one guy claims to have picked up 2000 stations over the years. i would like to get into it because i like alot of the little uhf stations syndicated shows. if any of you have done it or are into it now i would like to no a bit about the hobby to add it to my dish hobby.
 
I have experienced some odd UHF reception from across Lake Michigan , Chicago - Kalamazoo , or Chicago - Peoria.

I know what you are talking about , when you cite the people who claim to have received a UHF signal from 1000 's of miles away , some terrestrial phenomenon like meteor shower may help ? I think , well it's some kind of Skip where UHF signal bounces.

I read about people setting up VCR's on static channels and later viewing tape to see if anything came in , honestly I'd prefer to blindscan with an FTA receiver.
 
it sounds crazy! i always remember the antennas and little rabbit ears getting maybe 40 miles or so, maybe 10 or 12 stations. i would like to try it out since i like to tinker with things when i can.
 
Back in the 70's when we only had several TV channels and a rotor on the antenna,I remember skip on the lower VHF channels. I have seen Florida TV stations briefly overriding the stations 40 miles away in Albany,NY. At the time there was one UHF PBS channel.
 
I have experienced some odd UHF reception from across Lake Michigan , Chicago - Kalamazoo , or Chicago - Peoria.

Many people in Kalamazoo and north along the lake shore claim to get Milwaukee and other Wisc stations. Also South Bend and some Chicago stuff. It is also pretty easy to get stations from Traverse City/Cadillac.
 
It's very possible to pick up UHF stations from far away. It just depends on the conditions. Conditions of the sun, space, weather and geography. If you really want to get into finding these stations, learn what you can about transequatorial spread-F, sporadic-E, field-aligned irregularities, aurora, meteor scatter, tropospheric ducting and knife-edge diffraction. All can cause long-range UHF reception. The more you know about these things, the more you can predict when the conditions are ripe and then start scanning for stations. Have fun.
 
so if you get one of these far away channels i am guessing it is just for a short period of time? i wish there was an antenna that could get you all the uhf stations across the country. some little stations air the hard to find sitcoms that you cant see anywhere else.
 
so if you get one of these far away channels i am guessing it is just for a short period of time? i wish there was an antenna that could get you all the uhf stations across the country. some little stations air the hard to find sitcoms that you cant see anywhere else.

and how would that work? Lots of different areas using the same channel numbers especially if they are low powered stations. :)

At our cabin (northern MN) on a really warm muggy night we did get Chicago, LaCrosse, Iowa, and one from Missouri :)

I remember a couple years ago on radio I was an hour from Mpls and had a Chicago station crystal clear instead of the local Mpls one :eek:
 
Haven't see the effect TV wise, but get it all the time on AM radio. I listen to 1460 the fan in Columbus ohio (where I am) all the time during the day on my way to work. When I drive home at night (after 11pm), I can't get the station at all. Yet, I get 1000 am (ESPN radio chicago) clear as day. In addition, i get a new orleans sports radio and occasionally a WFAN from NY. None of these work during the day.
 
I've delved into DX'ing for as long as I can remember. When I was in the 6th grade, with money of mine, earned for cutting grass, I bought my 1st TV (GE 13" portable). It had rabbit ears with a snap-on bow-tie antenna. I would get yelled at for being up late/early and trying to get anything. Today I can't believe all the snow/static I used to watch, you won't hardly catch me watching snow anymore. I still do DX'ing today, mostly looking for any new digital additions to current or future digital OTA stations in my area. My best times are after dark, with the most likely luck being in the early morning hours (just before daylight). Of course the luck depends on Hermitmans explanation in post #6 above. I would explain it as "Ideal Atmospheric Conditions", and it occurs more often than you would think. Happy DX'ing!

Al
 
Haven't see the effect TV wise, but get it all the time on AM radio. I listen to 1460 the fan in Columbus ohio (where I am) all the time during the day on my way to work. When I drive home at night (after 11pm), I can't get the station at all. Yet, I get 1000 am (ESPN radio chicago) clear as day. In addition, i get a new orleans sports radio and occasionally a WFAN from NY. None of these work during the day.

that has to do with those channels being "clear channel" (no not Clear Channel as in the owner)

clear channel stations are the AM stations that are allowed to broadcast at 50K watts 24/7. There are other stations that may broadcast on that frequency in other parts of the country during the day but at night they either go off the air or are down to real low power. Here in Mpls we have WCCO 830. My uncle outside Philly can hear it on good nights.

I can get WGN & WBBM from Chicago, KOA from Denver, WWL from Nawlins, WLW from Cinci and WSM Nashville on good nights :) Get outside the city and lights/power lines and you'll be amazed what you can get :)

more info on clear channel stations
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clear_channel

and the list is at the end...what you can get depends on location :)
 
The atmospheric affects happen every june-ish to VHF/FM too... I once here in Columbus Ohio picked up in my car crystal clear for a good 10 minutes KGNZ 88.1 FM, Abilene, TX, mind you Columbus Ohio has a station on 88.1 ( a 10watt translator) and it was completely wiped out where I was driving. Ive also heard FM stations from Alabama, Florida, OKC and other places depending on the atmospheric conditions early mid summer.
 
I did a lot of radio and vhf dx'ing in the late 60's-early 70's and I found that the best times for vhf were in the early hours of the day-1:00-4:00 A.M. this was after our closest vhf channels signed off the air. Today I don't have any antennas, only dishes, so I would like to know if it is as easy as it used to be with stations that do not sign off the air like in the old days.
By the way , not having but 3 channels in our home , the only way to follow baseball in those days for me was radio Mon.-Fri and The Game Of The Week on Sat.
Because of this I spent a lot of time listening to clear channel stations to get Pirates, Reds, and Orioles games,With no guarantees of good reception when bad weather struck between you and the transmitter.
 
Used to DX on television VHF and UHF when I was a teen in Seattle, Washington. Contructed a rhombic antenna for receiving KPTV Channel 12 from Portland, Oregon approximately 150 miles distance for the Sunday night wrestling. The antenna would reliably pull in this station with a bit of snow, but perfectly viewable on a BW TV.

A phenomenon called E Skip and also tropospheric bending would occur where distant Canadian and California stations would all but wipe out local stations in the early evenings. This would usually last 2 or 3 hours, but on one occasion, this lasted for several days.

Lived in Haiti many years ago and used to listen to FM radio stations and watch TV stations from Florida and Georgia on a regular basis. We used to get a real kick out of logging as many FM stations as we could filter out. I remember on night we received over 75 different stations.
 
back in the 80's, I used to use a small black and white tv with a UHF-loop antenna on a piece of 450ohm ladder wire mounted outside to listen to cell phone calls on channels 79-83 using the fine tuner.

What a bunch of fun that was. I actually heard my boss one night making plans to cheat on his wife!!!! Amazing what you can hear on a black and white Hitachi at 2:00 am!!!
 
400 mhz ducting

There is a precision positioning (navigation) system around called Syledis made by the French. It runs in the 400 mhz band. We used it for seismic ops prior to GPS. There are tables with the system that show antenna heights to catch a ducting effect that, apparently has been well researched. I've used it out to about 200 kms very reliably during a dredging operation. This only works predictably overwater. I've also watched BBC television on a signal received in Newfoundland.
 
When I was growing up here in eastern Ohio (early 60's) I was turning the TV tuner and got a station on channel 3. All we had for an antenna was rabbit ears. The picture was clean and the sound was good. I knew there was no channel 3 nearby so I watched a while and it was New Brunswick, Nova Scotia. Wow! Was I surprised. It lasted a couple of hours and was gone, never to be seen again.
 
When I lived in Duluth, MN a few years ago had a weird one...and it just showed how weird atmospheric conditions could be

Very humid Saturday and picked up on a pair of rabbit ears crystal clear Channel 12 from Rhinelander, WI 200 miles away...but here is what makes it weird....Duluth (for 11 months) had a UPN Low powered station also on Channel 12...and the transmitter was 8 blocks from my house :eek:

Channel 12 Rhinelander blew that little 512 watt LP station out of the water
 
UHF DX mostly from meteors. and VHF DX on lower band during high sunspot activity.

UHF DX will only bring in stations for a few minutes less than an hour, find yourself an old TV with the continuous UHF dial , attach an omni directional UHF antenna, and just scan up and down the dial.

as for VHF DX, just monitor sunspot activity, if your hearing a lot on the news about solar flares and HAM operators getting zip on shortwave, check your VHF channels, the lower ones will be stronger, you´ll sometimes see 3 or more stations duking it out at the same time. as the ionization moves across the sky you´ll start picking up different cities.
 
Status
Please reply by conversation.
***

Users Who Are Viewing This Thread (Total: 1, Members: 0, Guests: 1)

Who Read This Thread (Total Members: 1)