Quote:
Originally Posted by Vorkuta
Our antenna rotator was me or one of my siblings. Another would be positioned at the doorway to relay "BETTER!" or "WORSE!" to the person actually rotating the antenna (with a hockey stick, standing on a snowbank).
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Our rooftop antenna was on a tall mast, and the rotator occasionally allowed us to pull in exotic signals.
In the winter and spring, a phenomenon called "e-skip" could occur, where the reflectivity of the "e layer" of the ionosphere would increase, allowing signals in the VHF TV spectrum to bounce back and forth to the surface of the Earth and dramatically increase the range of the TV signal.
This phenomenon was sporadic, seasonal, usually occurred early in the morning and could not be predicted, but occasionally we could pick up TV signals from the midwest USA and central Canada on our TV.
I clearly remember one time when I was about 12, I went down and turned on the TV to CKCW in Moncton to watch the Saturday morning cartoons. The channel was just starting to broadcast for the day, and Oh Canada was playing. I wasn't really paying much attention, then suddenly I heard the Star Spangled Banner playing too, so I perked up quickly, to find that the channel I was watching was actually in Sault-Ste-Marie ON, and the reception was strong enough that it was drowning out the signal from the Moncton station.
TV watching was an adventure back then.........