Mountaintop Tv reception, fact or fiction?

[rbrucecarter5]

see a 1500' tower top in Chicago 47.4 miles out. If a 14,000' mountain were at the ocean, the mountain could be seen for 145 miles on a clear day. All sorts of variables here...in the real world, there's no sea level near Pike's Peak and Lake Michigan isn't at sea level, so in the Chicago case, the height is above ground, whereas Pike's Peak is above sea level. Then there's the fact that almost no one's eyes

Pikes Peak: 14110 feet above sea level. Unfortunately, the surrounding terrain is already 6000 feet above sea level. So the height above average terrain is only about 8000 feet. The verdict? I got about 200 mile DX from the top of Pikes Peak - the 200 mile stuff was very weak, I suspect over the horizon.

 

[vibe]

Bruce- if you go 200 mi to the East of Pike's Peak the elevation drops off to about 3000-4000 ft. Does that make any difference?

 

[rbrucecarter5]

Bruce- if you go 200 mi to the East of Pike's Peak the elevation drops off to about 3000-4000 ft. Does that make any difference?

I was hoping for some Kansas stations, because you can see 50 miles into Kansas. But that area is sparsely populated, and what few stations there are were covered by locals. I tried for some Wichita stations that should have been clear, but they were absent.

The car I was using has the stupid wires embedded in the windshield and is not an outstanding DX setup, but I did drop narrow ceramic filters into the FM which really helps. I had some Casper / Cheyenne Wyoming stuff, but that was about as far away as I could get. I had heard stories of 400 mile stuff from the top of Pikes Peak - but I listened very carefully for an extended period of time - nothing like that. 200 miles was it. I could do better over flat terrain with a good tuner and good antenna. I've done 330 miles reliably with a setup like that.

 

[BRNout]

Bruce- if you go 200 mi to the East of Pike's Peak the elevation drops off to about 3000-4000 ft. Does that make any difference?

I was hoping for some Kansas stations, because you can see 50 miles into Kansas. But that area is sparsely populated, and what few stations there are were covered by locals. I tried for some Wichita stations that should have been clear, but they were absent.

The car I was using has the stupid wires embedded in the windshield and is not an outstanding DX setup, but I did drop narrow ceramic filters into the FM which really helps. I had some Casper / Cheyenne Wyoming stuff, but that was about as far away as I could get. I had heard stories of 400 mile stuff from the top of Pikes Peak - but I listened very carefully for an extended period of time - nothing like that. 200 miles was it. I could do better over flat terrain with a good tuner and good antenna. I've done 330 miles reliably with a setup like that.

Wichita is much too far away (+/- 450 miles) to pick up from Pikes Peak. In fact, I don't know that you'd even pick those stations up from 30,000 feet without some help from atmospheric conditions. So are Albuquerque (which has terrain in the way) and other larger markets outside of CO.

No, you did about as well as I did with a good antenna/stereo setup there in 1990 - you get Wyoming stations (I don't recall getting Casper) and some from mountain towns west of the divide (but not Grand Jct.). I think that Burlington, CO was as far as I picked up to the east. Maybe you'd get stations from the SE corner of Colorado too, but maybe not. Nowadays, there are even more local signals - so it would be even tougher.

You know, getting signals from places like Cheyenne and Laramie up there is a pretty good feat. That's some 200 miles - which is impressive. Casper is even farther!

 

[vibe]

Re: Mountaintop TV reception, fact or fiction?

It appears that the area about 200 mi due east is really sparsely populated; 200 mi or so puts one into the Oakley KS, Scott City KS area with Garden City just due South. Real nice area, was there last summer. It's a good probabality that a lot of these stations in KS are on the same frequencies as the Denver metro area.
Still 200 mi is nothing to sneeze at...

 

[radiorob2.0]

My favorite DX spot is any of the peaks in the Smoky Mountains along the Tennessee/North Carolina Border. If you're lucky you will be at one to of the highest peaks east of the Mississippi. The bulk of the signals come from the south and southeast and include Atlanta, Chattanooga, and as far away as Augusta. Besides a car radio, I'd use a general coverage receiver like the Radio Shack (Sangean) DX-398 and the signal strength would be full or darn close.

 

[rbrucecarter5]

An old rule of thumb for coverage area ---

Double the height above average terrain, then take the square root. Pikes peak was 8000 feet above the surrounding terrain. Double it you get 16000. Square root is about 125, which I am fairly confident everything within 125 miles was solid on the radio. Beyond that, I had some 200 mile type stuff, but it was quite weak. In other words over the horizon. So the old rule of thumb seems to hold true for estimating coverage area from Pike's Peak.

 

[BobOnTheJob]

Re: An old rule of thumb for coverage area ---

Double the height above average terrain, then take the square root. Pikes peak was 8000 feet above the surrounding terrain. Double it you get 16000. Square root is about 125, which I am fairly confident everything within 125 miles was solid on the radio. Beyond that, I had some 200 mile type stuff, but it was quite weak. In other words over the horizon. So the old rule of thumb seems to hold true for estimating coverage area from Pike's Peak.

That's a good general rule of thumb as long as there are no wildly varying HAAT's in various directions. If the figure is 10,000' in 1 direction & -2000' in another, then having the HAAT from different radial directions can give some good guidance as to which way the DX will blow in from & which directions not to look in. You can do a free HAAT study on any point in the USA (including your home shack) at http://www.fcc.gov/mb/audio/bickel/haat_calculator.html . Very insightful.

 

[cyberdad]

I'm on airplanes on average once a month...more frequently in the fall. The fm (and am) radio "rule" is something of a relic. Concerns regarding interference with aircraft communications have been pretty much mitigated, and the half-dozen or so commercial airline pilots I know all concur that its a non-issue for them....regardless of what might still be said during in flight announcements. (They DO however, want you to have all devices turned off for takeoff and landing....primarily so you can hear any instructions or announcements they need to make).

Airborne fm listening in the eastern u.s. is pretty much a mess. Stations tend to be in for a minute or two, then either fade or get overpowered. Often its just an unlistenable jumble. Out west, however, its a different story. Stations can stay locked in and clear for hundreds of miles.

No, I'm not a frequent "airborne radio listener". I'll use my Ipod, if anything. But I do have an fm walkman in my computer case and every now and then, I'll break it out. Generally when there's a news or sports story I want to follow.

 

[vibe]

I was at Stratton Mtn VT base lodge elev 2100 ft above sea level and about 1700 ft HAAT. The Boston stations (about 100 mi as the crow flies) were anywhere between weak and fairly strong. Go figure. We used to get WAAF Worcester really clear but not a trace from their new transmitter. The New Hampshire and Maine FM's from 80-100 mi away were more clear than Boston. Didn't have my HH TV w/ me, darn. Was there to play golf and didn't do much reception checking except for 2 band scans in the lodge parking lot.

 

[RMarino]

My favorite DX spot is any of the peaks in the Smoky Mountains along the Tennessee/North Carolina Border. If you're lucky you will be at one to of the highest peaks east of the Mississippi. The bulk of the signals come from the south and southeast and include Atlanta, Chattanooga, and as far away as Augusta.

I've DXed a few times from that location. So far my personal distance record is 93.1 in Winston-Salem, NC which at the time was WMQX Oldies 93, but now its country as WPAW. And I received them while driving along Newfound Gap. Greater distances can probably heard up at Clingman's Dome. I've only been up to the top once. I brought my Walkman up there and just about every FM frequency had something on it.

 

[woody1394]

Here in the San Francisco bay area, the best possible place to DX with TV is on top of Mt. Diablo. I saw this thread a month or so ago and decided bring a small DC TV up to the top of the hill, and picked up everything from Sacramento to Fresno- and even got a station from Chico. Line of sight signals, when using the curvature of the Earth to your advantage, can be quite fun!