[BC] Digital TV converter boxes

[Broadcast List USER]

A couple of things:

First, the Communications Act of 1996 allows you to put up a tower
(on your own property, or with the permission of your landlord) to
get a "line of sight" path to the transmitters that serve you.  I
recall it is the "B" coverage area, but I don't want to bother to
look up the rule.  You can "shop" the stations that serve you and
find the worst path.  For me, it is one WAY out of the market, and
NBC affiliate that is three times further away than my local NBC O&O.

You cannot use the four-thirds graph paper that we know we SHOULD
use, nor can you specify a fresnel zone clearance of greater than
zero, but line of sight isn't that bad.  You CAN clear buildings and
trees in the path in addition to terrain.  If you want to do the path
yourself, you can use Google Earth to find any obstructions you need
to go visit to review.  For me, I can put up about a 325 foot tall TV
receive tower, and there is nothing the county or Home Owner's
Association can do about it, other than requiring a building permit.
Since my property is small, it limits me to a self supporting tower.
Since a 325 foot self supporter is more expensive than I want to
finance, I will likely limited it to somewhere between 125 and 199 feet.


On Apr 17, 2008, at 6:00 AM, broadcast-request at radiolists.net wrote:
>From: nakayle at gmail.com
>
>  Well most of these trees are not on my property so I can't go
>chopping them
>down, and since the transmitters are 15-20 miles away how far would
>I have
>to go to clear a tree-free RF path?
>
>  I think the basic problem is that the RF spectrum is poorly
>allocated for
>today's needs.  UHF is not well suited for TV broadcasting while
>much of the
>VHF band is consumed by short-range radio communications which
>could just as
>well be done on UHF freeing these frequencies for TV.