OTA.....

After my last post, it looked like Winter was done. Well apparently mother nature had other ideas. The weather has turned cold, the local ski hills got nailed with 30 to 40 cm's of new snow (fortunately most of it stayed away from Woodside!) The drop in temp has me thinking about something that is non flying related, a little project that I took on over the winter.

OTA ?  Simply put, the art of pulling your television signals out of the air using an antenna. OTA = Over the Air.

It all started when I had to replace my old television with one of these new fangle flat panel jobs. During the setup process I scanned my cable feed channels... of course none of them were in the HD the TV was capable of....except one. Seeing the HD got me thinking this ain't bad. I then decided to find out what it cost to get my cable company to deliver the HD. They suck. For the amount I watch TV, the cable companies don't deserve the coin that they were trying to hose me for.  In the process I tripped over the fact that of full HD signals being transmitted in the big cities, for FREE.

In end, there is plenty of info out there on the topic. My main source was:  Digital Forum

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=81

Next, I did some research using a online tool from a  web site called TV Fool ( http://tvfool.com/ ). Next, up went a mast and a small commercially manufacture antenna called a Clearstream4:

 

The results, a solid fix of 5 local digital channels (and another half dozen fair analog signals). 3 of the digital channels offer full HD (the nice stuff like, Hockey Night in Canada! and CTV's coverage of the Olympics!... all that a good Canadian needs).  The thing with digital signals, You either get a solid picture or you don't. No more bad twisted analog signals to try and coax something in.

The signals (if you've got signals to "get") are free. If you want to build your own antenna, they can be built for next to nothing (especially if you've got a bunch of old hang gliding junk kicking around, here is a photo album of my home brew:  http://picasaweb.google.com/towforce/DBGH# ).

I put $200 into a store bought rig (with amp) and I also built a free rig out of junk. Both preformed good enough .  Your TV needs to have a ATSC to deal with the digital encoding, most of the new sets do.

The funny thing is TV is such a time sucking device that really has taken over and wasted so much of our lives. I surf my short list of stations and if I see nothing it turn off.  (Think about the times you've surfed up and down your 50+ channels and nothing's on?)

If your fed up with Cable bills, give OTA a look.

Man I hope the flying season starts soon ;-)

And yet another year begins.... 2010

Looks like we have survived our winter and look forward to another season of aviation.  The little local event called "Winter Olympics" has come and gone and seemed like a pretty good time to dust off the wings and head to the hills.  Something called global warming has helped keep the local hills free of snow.... perhaps more accurately stated, "El Nino" and its warm ocean currents put up a challenging fight for the host of this years Olympic events!

With the warm winter Mia and I had picked a few days here and there to get out on the Paragliders. Even managed to scratch some airtime but Saturday, March 6th seemed like a good time to bust out the "Big Bird".

It was a scratchy hard work kind of flight but enough of a challenge to start getting the feel back. Managed close to 2 hours and a few nice speed runs through launch, ending in a so -so near no wind landing.  Mia decided to stick to the Paraglider until after her latest final exams (Mid April) but managed close to an hour.

Lots of rusty pilots out re-learning the art of aviation. Have to admit that after my Paraglider mid air a few years back I trust absolutely NO one while thermaling. Especially in the spring!

One of the rusty pilots out was my brother in law Ken, with his new (used) acquisition.... the ATOS VX:

 

Its a bloody Big Bird! My VR is no longer the local king of span! Ken is going to take some time getting used to his new wing but I think once he gets the handle on packing the behemoth around he will soon be enjoying the beast.

We head down to Mansfield Easter long weekend to chase out the mice, clean up the property and sump out the basement (if it needs it ;-) We will drag down the "Bags" just in case the Chelan's Airport Ridge is working. Other then that its more the act of getting away that we look forward to.... and there are not many places more "away from it all", then Mansfield WA.