Extreme OTA reception

[radiorob2.0]

What have you developed or seen as extreme methods of receiving an over the air signal?

A trip to Eastern Kentucky years ago had many examples. As you head down the Mountain Parkway (once a toll road) the mountains get thick. In order to receive the Lexington stations, an all UHF market, high gain UHF antennas were all over the place usually placed where there was a hole in the mountains; sometimes high up on a hill or aimed towards a cut in the mountain where the road was placed. At about Campton (60 miles away) antennas would disappear outside of a few placed high up on a mountain to receive Lexington or Huntington. The feed line when there was a distance between the antenna and set was usually ladder line. It was a balanced line that normally used for ham radio and had an impedance of 480 ohms. It worked well as long as it was taught and not touching anything.

 

[ngriffin]

I have read about rhombic antennas being used on low VHF channels to feed cable systems in the early days. These would be at 150+ miles. Bob Cooper an early cable and satellite pioneer had an article about them in the Worldwide TV-FM DX Association newsletter a few years ago.

On the low VHF channels (especially 2 and 3) there is some bending of the signal beyond the line of sight, so the high-gain of the rhombic would bring the very weak signals to a watchable level. I would imagine that there would be wide variations in signal level throughout the day and the antenna would have to be far from roads to avoid impulse noise. Probably not the greatest picture, but a setup like that would only be attempted where there was no alternative.