I live on the outskirts of a small town located between four larger cities, and can get OTA TV stations reliably from three of them. Driving or walking into town, I climb a gentle rise, not really steep enough to call it a "hill." The maximum elevation is just before reaching the center of town, about a mile from my house. Near that point is a handsome two-story house with a tall roof (full-height attic), and a TV antenna on top. It must be 40 feet or so above ground level, in addition to being at just about the highest point in town.

I've always thought, "gee, they must get great reception if they actually use that antenna." Today, I finally looked up the latitude and longitude, and plugged them into TV Fool along with a 40' antenna height.

Wow! Line of sight to stations serving three cities: Greenville SC in the 320-340° range, Charlotte NC at about 34°, and Columbia SC in the 110-115° range. I have LOS only to the Greenville stations, although the Charlotte and Columbia ones usually come in OK. If I had my 91XG plus YA-1713 up there, they could also pick up Augusta GA easily at about 178°, which I can only occasionally get at my house because of a hill and a line of neighbors' houses along that direction.

I ought to tell the owner that when he decides to sell, I want first crack at it. :D

Staking out houses based on their antenna location, I think there's a support group for that... ;)

Seriously, would be nice to get all that, I'm happy I can get Philly and Baltimore where I live.

Yeah, if I lived just a couple of blocks away, on Main Street (also aptly-named Ridge Pike), I'd probably get Philadelphia with a paper clip and have a fair shot at New York and maybe Baltimore with a big antenna, at least in VHF. As it is I need a 4221 for reliable reception, and the folk near the bottom of the hill (maybe 250-300 feet) get nothing.

Yeah, if I lived just a couple of blocks away, on Main Street (also aptly-named Ridge Pike), I'd probably get Philadelphia with a paper clip and have a fair shot at New York and maybe Baltimore with a big antenna, at least in VHF. As it is I need a 4221 for reliable reception, and the folk near the bottom of the hill (maybe 250-300 feet) get nothing.

That area is notorious for bad RF reception (multipath causes a huge problem as well).

I live on the outskirts of a small town located between four larger cities, and can get OTA TV stations reliably from three of them. Driving or walking into town, I climb a gentle rise, not really steep enough to call it a "hill." The maximum elevation is just before reaching the center of town, about a mile from my house. Near that point is a handsome two-story house with a tall roof (full-height attic), and a TV antenna on top. It must be 40 feet or so above ground level, in addition to being at just about the highest point in town.

I've always thought, "gee, they must get great reception if they actually use that antenna." Today, I finally looked up the latitude and longitude, and plugged them into TV Fool along with a 40' antenna height.

Wow! Line of sight to stations serving three cities: Greenville SC in the 320-340° range, Charlotte NC at about 34°, and Columbia SC in the 110-115° range. I have LOS only to the Greenville stations, although the Charlotte and Columbia ones usually come in OK. If I had my 91XG plus YA-1713 up there, they could also pick up Augusta GA easily at about 178°, which I can only occasionally get at my house because of a hill and a line of neighbors' houses along that direction.

I ought to tell the owner that when he decides to sell, I want first crack at it. :D


Try putting in the cordinates for the UNC PBS station on Grandmother Moutain (licensed to Linville, NC) if you really want to see multi-market coverage. Who needs 40 feet of elevation when you have 5,000 feet of elevation.

If you want to talk about great transmit sites, not much can beat Tucson's Mt. Bigelow at 8800', with surrounding terrain at about 2600'. Unfortunately for many who live in the market, neighboring Mt. Lemmon's 9100' shades the NW suburbs of Tucson, but people have reported reliable reception of UHF DTV signals with no skip/ducting/other atmospheric conditions at 125+ miles away in the far northern reaches of Phoenix's suburbs.

Try putting in the cordinates for the UNC PBS station on Grandmother Moutain (licensed to Linville, NC) if you really want to see multi-market coverage. Who needs 40 feet of elevation when you have 5,000 feet of elevation.

I'm looking forward to their analog signal shutting down because it interferes (from about 110 miles) with my reception of the CBS digital station in Columbia SC, at about 70 miles and 120° away on the same channel. On a good night I can pick up their digital signal, and I can usually see a very snowy analog picture when I aim my antenna towards them.

Actually they're going to move their digital signal from ch 54 to their old analog channel (17), but they'll also be dropping from 1550 kW analog to 55 kW digital on that channel, so they won't be as much of a problem as they are now.

neighboring Mt. Lemmon's 9100' shades the NW suburbs of Tucson

Funny you should mention that... my mother lived her last few years in a retirement home in that area. She had cable, of course, but my wife and I briefly considered buying a condo not far away because we were visiting regularly, so I checked the TVFool maps, and thought, "Oh, @#&%$!" As I recall, reception peters out on most stations about a mile south of our usual hotel on North Oracle Rd.

If you want to talk about great transmit sites, not much can beat Tucson's Mt. Bigelow at 8800', with surrounding terrain at about 2600'. Unfortunately for many who live in the market, neighboring Mt. Lemmon's 9100' shades the NW suburbs of Tucson, but people have reported reliable reception of UHF DTV signals with no skip/ducting/other atmospheric conditions at 125+ miles away in the far northern reaches of Phoenix's suburbs.


There are a number of transmitter shacks on top of mountains around the Country. The UNC PBS facility on Grandmother Mountain is a 2 story complex the last time I was up there. I was talking about great *receiving* location as your antenna is up 5,000 feet and would pull in Greensboro/Winston-Salem/HighPoint-Charlotte-Greenville/Spartanburg with a coat hanger, lol.