Goofball_star_dot_etal wrote:
On Sun, 26 Jun 2005 17:00:32 -0400, "Robert Morein"
wrote:


"Goofball_star_dot_etal" wrote
in message
...
On Tue, 21 Jun 2005 02:38:10 -0400, "Robert Morein"
wrote:

There really isn't.
It is a common misconception that a station is not
received due to
inadequate signal strength. This is actually quite
rare.

******** (run out of fingers)

It is the rule that the vast majority of VHF stations
are out of
range.

The range is usually not determined by signal strength.
It is loss
of phase coherency, due to the increasing number of
multiple paths
as distance from the station increases.

There is no doubt that multiple paths can mess up your TV
or FM stereo
but there is also no doubt that signal decreases with
range, rapidly
for VHF over ground and more rapidly when the path passes
close to or
over the horizon. 40miles is a long way unless the
antennae are high
up. High antenna gain is good whatever but at 88.3 MHz
indoors that is
not really much of an option. Get the antenna out and UP
if one can.

Agreed. Which is more important - strength of the signal or
purity of the signal is dependent on the specfic sitaution.

When I was a teen-ager I DXed the midwest from my a roof
antenna on my parent's house on the northeast side of
Detroit. There were multipath issues with some stations
downtown, but signal strength and propigation situations
limited my ability to pull stations out of mid-Ohio, etc.

My all-time DX record involved picking up stations in Miami
Florida from El Paso Tx, but this was one-time thing. Quite
clearly over the horizon.

I also picked up some stations in New Mexico, possibly by
means of a known means of popagation of VHF signal through
solid mountains.

I was generally able to distinguish audibly between stations
that were trashed by multipath, versus stations that were
trashed by low signal strength, versus stations that were
trashed by interferring signals.