View Single Post
Old 11-09-2016, 01:34 PM   #802
Hack&Lube
Atomic Nerd
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Calgary
Exp:
Default

I cut the cord years ago but wanted something to watch TV American election coverage so I found a $3 plastic 5 inch UHF antenna from the 80s at a thrift store and put it on my downtown condo balcony.

I've tried before with VHF rabbit ears and got nothing and I realized that I face completely away from signal hill and any stray radio transmissions are getting blocked by a huge amount of buildings behind me in line of sight and also reflected by the glass which covers most of my building exterior (radio works just like light and a portion is reflected). I also found out all our signals are UHF.

I calculated that if that was happening, that the transmissions were also bouncing off all the glass covered buildings in downtown also so there was a chance that I could get good signal reception if I pointed the UHF antenna at a bunch of other buildings and it worked! I'm totally blocked off from the transmission towers but the transmissions are bouncing around the downtown buildings and I'm getting amazing signals. I just needed to get the antenna outside.

It's funny, even if I have the antenna inside and I'm receiving nothing, even opening the balcony door a crack lets in enough radio waves that it starts to work. For now I've wrapped up everything in a little garbage bag as a form of ghetto weather-proofing and put it on the concrete balcony floor. Hopefully, this won't also act like a big lightning rod directly through the coax into my house...

Now, the only problem is I didn't realize OTA sucked so much in Calgary and I'm only getting 6 channels worth of junk...2 of which are almost unwatchable because YESTV is a religious network and OMNI is mostly ethnic programming which switches languages every hour! CICT seems to play nothing but Global News and ET Canada, and the rest are filled with repeats of Modern Family, Big Bang Theory, and 3 & a Half men.

Oh well, I guess I can watch HNIC at least. I can also catch Colbert, James Corden, and Trevor Noah but they all play after 12AM! I'm not in junior high anymore. I can't stay up that late. Those people living in Canadian cities near the US border out east have it lucky, they can catch 20+ channels including the big networks like NBC, ABC, CBS, etc. It sucks here in Calgary.

BTW, I haven't watched TV for almost 15 years. What happened to RDTV and ACCESS?

Last edited by Hack&Lube; 11-09-2016 at 01:46 PM.
Hack&Lube is offline   Reply With Quote
The Following User Says Thank You to Hack&Lube For This Useful Post: