[kwlug-disc] (no subject)

[John Johnson]

On 2014-02-26 10:33, Khalid Baheyeldin wrote:
> Anyone has OTA and getting PBS from Buffalo in West Waterloo? Or this 
> impossible?

PBS in Buffalo knows that a large part of their market in in Canada, 
specifically the GTA.
I would suspect that they have strategically placed their transmitter 
accordingly.
I think that receiving PBS in West Waterloo would be challenge.

I believe that some of the US OTA HDTV transmitters are also 
strategically placed on Grand Island in the Niagara River above the falls.
But at least one other transmitter location is further from the border, 
in the "south towns", possibly at a higher elevation.

For the Waterloo Region, geography is a consideration. There is the 
matter of the Niagara Escarpment as is extends from the Niagara Falls to 
Hamilton accross the lands between Lakes Ontario and Erie. And then 
there is the part of the Escarpment that extends northward from Hamilton 
to Rockwood / Acton / Georgetown. After the escarpment, another 
consideration, is, as has been mentioned, local topography, e.g. 
elevation, and blockages.

Please recall that the purpose of the CN Tower in Toronto is that it 
provides a transmitter location high over the urban clutter of buildings 
in the city and extends the reach of the transmitters located there over 
a large swath of the GTA.

OTA propagation of TV signals whether UHF or VHF is typically 
"line-of-sight" with little capacity for over-the-horizon reception.
Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line-of-sight_propagation

Regards
John Johnson