On Wed, 16 Aug 2017 09:58:37 -0400, John H
wrote:

Yesterday I came back from Gettysburg, about 100 miles. It wasn't until I got within about 80 miles
that I could pick up the FM news station I listen to regularly broadcasting from DC. It's for damn
sure I couldn't get any Boston FM stations, like, I'm sure, Harry does.

FM is pretty much line of sight. I know that even here in Florida
where there are no real hills FM is tough. On a clear night I can get
the FM station out of Marathon (Fl Keys) but that is across the water
about 100 miles. I start losing the Tampa stations and FT Myers
stations about 70 miles away. There is a dead zone around Venice where
I don't get either of them.
Now if you are talking AM, the clear channel 50KW stations can be
heard 1000 miles away at night. There used to only be a handful of
them but the last time I looked there are a **** load of them. I guess
as AM popularity faded, they started allowing more big ones.
Unfortunately it seems most AM is either sports, news or Spanish.

On 8/16/2017 11:24 AM, wrote:
On Wed, 16 Aug 2017 09:58:37 -0400, John H
wrote:

Yesterday I came back from Gettysburg, about 100 miles. It wasn't until I got within about 80 miles
that I could pick up the FM news station I listen to regularly broadcasting from DC. It's for damn
sure I couldn't get any Boston FM stations, like, I'm sure, Harry does.

FM is pretty much line of sight. I know that even here in Florida
where there are no real hills FM is tough. On a clear night I can get
the FM station out of Marathon (Fl Keys) but that is across the water
about 100 miles. I start losing the Tampa stations and FT Myers
stations about 70 miles away. There is a dead zone around Venice where
I don't get either of them.
Now if you are talking AM, the clear channel 50KW stations can be
heard 1000 miles away at night. There used to only be a handful of
them but the last time I looked there are a **** load of them. I guess
as AM popularity faded, they started allowing more big ones.
Unfortunately it seems most AM is either sports, news or Spanish.


HD FM range is much less than regular FM.

WBZ in Boston is one of the original clear channel stations. I picked
it up in Denver Colorado at night. Obviously skip.

On Wed, 16 Aug 2017 12:46:18 -0400, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:

FM is pretty much line of sight. I know that even here in Florida
where there are no real hills FM is tough. On a clear night I can get
the FM station out of Marathon (Fl Keys) but that is across the water
about 100 miles. I start losing the Tampa stations and FT Myers
stations about 70 miles away. There is a dead zone around Venice where
I don't get either of them.
Now if you are talking AM, the clear channel 50KW stations can be
heard 1000 miles away at night. There used to only be a handful of
them but the last time I looked there are a **** load of them. I guess
as AM popularity faded, they started allowing more big ones.
Unfortunately it seems most AM is either sports, news or Spanish.


HD FM range is much less than regular FM.

WBZ in Boston is one of the original clear channel stations. I picked
it up in Denver Colorado at night. Obviously skip.


We were AM DXers when I was a kid ... sort of. I had a 100' long wire
antenna out back, connected to a 5 bottle radio and we could pick up
WLS WBZ and WOWO just about every night. There were only about 5 or 6
clear channel stations then and the ones out west were usually not
available to us. I got started after being in Lake of the Ozarks with
the Teamsters and being introduced to Dick Biondi by the locals. I was
thrilled to get him on my radio in DC. I have picked WLS in my car
driving down I-95 in the middle of the night but it was far from 5X5.

wrote:
On Wed, 16 Aug 2017 12:46:18 -0400, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:

FM is pretty much line of sight. I know that even here in Florida
where there are no real hills FM is tough. On a clear night I can get
the FM station out of Marathon (Fl Keys) but that is across the water
about 100 miles. I start losing the Tampa stations and FT Myers
stations about 70 miles away. There is a dead zone around Venice where
I don't get either of them.
Now if you are talking AM, the clear channel 50KW stations can be
heard 1000 miles away at night. There used to only be a handful of
them but the last time I looked there are a **** load of them. I guess
as AM popularity faded, they started allowing more big ones.
Unfortunately it seems most AM is either sports, news or Spanish.


HD FM range is much less than regular FM.

WBZ in Boston is one of the original clear channel stations. I picked
it up in Denver Colorado at night. Obviously skip.


We were AM DXers when I was a kid ... sort of. I had a 100' long wire
antenna out back, connected to a 5 bottle radio and we could pick up
WLS WBZ and WOWO just about every night. There were only about 5 or 6
clear channel stations then and the ones out west were usually not
available to us. I got started after being in Lake of the Ozarks with
the Teamsters and being introduced to Dick Biondi by the locals. I was
thrilled to get him on my radio in DC. I have picked WLS in my car
driving down I-95 in the middle of the night but it was far from 5X5.


Longest distance I got, was coming back from Keesler AFB and going over
Donner Pass, got the New Orleans AM station that was on my presets. Came
in very well.

On Wednesday, August 16, 2017 at 3:05:51 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Wed, 16 Aug 2017 12:46:18 -0400, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:

FM is pretty much line of sight. I know that even here in Florida
where there are no real hills FM is tough. On a clear night I can get
the FM station out of Marathon (Fl Keys) but that is across the water
about 100 miles. I start losing the Tampa stations and FT Myers
stations about 70 miles away. There is a dead zone around Venice where
I don't get either of them.
Now if you are talking AM, the clear channel 50KW stations can be
heard 1000 miles away at night. There used to only be a handful of
them but the last time I looked there are a **** load of them. I guess
as AM popularity faded, they started allowing more big ones.
Unfortunately it seems most AM is either sports, news or Spanish.


HD FM range is much less than regular FM.

WBZ in Boston is one of the original clear channel stations. I picked
it up in Denver Colorado at night. Obviously skip.


We were AM DXers when I was a kid ... sort of. I had a 100' long wire
antenna out back, connected to a 5 bottle radio and we could pick up
WLS WBZ and WOWO just about every night. There were only about 5 or 6
clear channel stations then and the ones out west were usually not
available to us. I got started after being in Lake of the Ozarks with
the Teamsters and being introduced to Dick Biondi by the locals. I was
thrilled to get him on my radio in DC. I have picked WLS in my car
driving down I-95 in the middle of the night but it was far from 5X5.

I used to get WLS in SC at night. Conditions had to be right.

Years ago I had the biggest TV antenna Channel Master made on a rotor at the top of a ~30ft pole. After midnight I could turn it towards Atlanta and pick up WKLS 96 Rock and it was listenable. That was nearly 200 miles away.

On 8/16/17 4:17 PM, Its Me wrote:
On Wednesday, August 16, 2017 at 3:05:51 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Wed, 16 Aug 2017 12:46:18 -0400, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:

FM is pretty much line of sight. I know that even here in Florida
where there are no real hills FM is tough. On a clear night I can get
the FM station out of Marathon (Fl Keys) but that is across the water
about 100 miles. I start losing the Tampa stations and FT Myers
stations about 70 miles away. There is a dead zone around Venice where
I don't get either of them.
Now if you are talking AM, the clear channel 50KW stations can be
heard 1000 miles away at night. There used to only be a handful of
them but the last time I looked there are a **** load of them. I guess
as AM popularity faded, they started allowing more big ones.
Unfortunately it seems most AM is either sports, news or Spanish.


HD FM range is much less than regular FM.

WBZ in Boston is one of the original clear channel stations. I picked
it up in Denver Colorado at night. Obviously skip.


We were AM DXers when I was a kid ... sort of. I had a 100' long wire
antenna out back, connected to a 5 bottle radio and we could pick up
WLS WBZ and WOWO just about every night. There were only about 5 or 6
clear channel stations then and the ones out west were usually not
available to us. I got started after being in Lake of the Ozarks with
the Teamsters and being introduced to Dick Biondi by the locals. I was
thrilled to get him on my radio in DC. I have picked WLS in my car
driving down I-95 in the middle of the night but it was far from 5X5.

I used to get WLS in SC at night. Conditions had to be right.

Years ago I had the biggest TV antenna Channel Master made on a rotor at the top of a ~30ft pole. After midnight I could turn it towards Atlanta and pick up WKLS 96 Rock and it was listenable. That was nearly 200 miles away.


When I was growing up in New Haven, we had Channel 8, WNHC, the local
ABC affiliate. If you wanted more than that, you had a switch on the
back of your TV to switch to another antenna that was aimed towards New
York City, from which you could get very good reception of New York
stations, including Channel 2 (CBS), Channel 4 (NBC) Channel 5 (Dumont),
Channel 7 (ABC), Channel 9 (WOR), Channel 11 (WPIX) and Channel 13
(forget the affiliation). Channel 3 was a Hartford station and CBS
affiliate.

On Wed, 16 Aug 2017 18:02:40 -0400, Keyser Soze
wrote:

When I was growing up in New Haven, we had Channel 8, WNHC, the local
ABC affiliate. If you wanted more than that, you had a switch on the
back of your TV to switch to another antenna that was aimed towards New
York City, from which you could get very good reception of New York
stations, including Channel 2 (CBS), Channel 4 (NBC) Channel 5 (Dumont),
Channel 7 (ABC), Channel 9 (WOR), Channel 11 (WPIX) and Channel 13
(forget the affiliation). Channel 3 was a Hartford station and CBS
affiliate.

DC had 4
WRC NBC 4,
WTTG 5 Independent
WMAL(later WJLA) ABC 7
WTOP CBS 9,
Later they added WETA the PBS channel 3 and Ch 20 another independent.

You could get 2, 11 and 13 from Baltimore but it was snowy and the
same stuff as the 3 networks in DC had most of the time.

If you put a big antenna on a pole with a rotor, you could spin around
and get a Redskins game from Richmond (Ch 6) but it was not a very
good picture. That was before they lifted the blackout ban.

I remember when they came out with "Super TV" Channel 50, a
subscription service. There was always someone hacking that signal.
Originally they just buried the horizontal (vertical?) sync pulse in
the sound track and that was trivial to hack. They it got more
complicated. I had the first box but it wasn't worth it to chase it
when they changed. By then I had a BetaMax (circa 75-6) and I was
getting my movies on tape shortly after that.
Originally it was just a few early Beta people swapping tapes around
and then when the Beta 2 came out (77-8?) they started video clubs
where you paid to rent movies, one way or another. Some had a big
subscription rate with all you can eat included, others were pretty
cheap to join and you paid per movie,

On Wed, 16 Aug 2017 13:17:13 -0700 (PDT), Its Me wrote:

On Wednesday, August 16, 2017 at 3:05:51 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Wed, 16 Aug 2017 12:46:18 -0400, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:

FM is pretty much line of sight. I know that even here in Florida
where there are no real hills FM is tough. On a clear night I can get
the FM station out of Marathon (Fl Keys) but that is across the water
about 100 miles. I start losing the Tampa stations and FT Myers
stations about 70 miles away. There is a dead zone around Venice where
I don't get either of them.
Now if you are talking AM, the clear channel 50KW stations can be
heard 1000 miles away at night. There used to only be a handful of
them but the last time I looked there are a **** load of them. I guess
as AM popularity faded, they started allowing more big ones.
Unfortunately it seems most AM is either sports, news or Spanish.


HD FM range is much less than regular FM.

WBZ in Boston is one of the original clear channel stations. I picked
it up in Denver Colorado at night. Obviously skip.


We were AM DXers when I was a kid ... sort of. I had a 100' long wire
antenna out back, connected to a 5 bottle radio and we could pick up
WLS WBZ and WOWO just about every night. There were only about 5 or 6
clear channel stations then and the ones out west were usually not
available to us. I got started after being in Lake of the Ozarks with
the Teamsters and being introduced to Dick Biondi by the locals. I was
thrilled to get him on my radio in DC. I have picked WLS in my car
driving down I-95 in the middle of the night but it was far from 5X5.

I used to get WLS in SC at night. Conditions had to be right.

Years ago I had the biggest TV antenna Channel Master made on a rotor at the top of a ~30ft pole. After midnight I could turn it towards Atlanta and pick up WKLS 96 Rock and it was listenable. That was nearly 200 miles away.

'WLS, in Chicago' was 'the' station when I was in high school, in Sedalia, MO.

wrote:
On Wed, 16 Aug 2017 09:58:37 -0400, John H
wrote:

Yesterday I came back from Gettysburg, about 100 miles. It wasn't until
I got within about 80 miles
that I could pick up the FM news station I listen to regularly
broadcasting from DC. It's for damn
sure I couldn't get any Boston FM stations, like, I'm sure, Harry does.

FM is pretty much line of sight. I know that even here in Florida
where there are no real hills FM is tough. On a clear night I can get
the FM station out of Marathon (Fl Keys) but that is across the water
about 100 miles. I start losing the Tampa stations and FT Myers
stations about 70 miles away. There is a dead zone around Venice where
I don't get either of them.
Now if you are talking AM, the clear channel 50KW stations can be
heard 1000 miles away at night. There used to only be a handful of
them but the last time I looked there are a **** load of them. I guess
as AM popularity faded, they started allowing more big ones.
Unfortunately it seems most AM is either sports, news or Spanish.



I like the comedy channels on Sirius, and driving to Los Angeles there is a
very good 40-60's station, but only for part of the way. Other than that
it is talk stations and Spanish language stations. But being thrifty,
looking for a good deal for the renewal.