Totallyr, roughly where in the city do you live?

I used to live in Dundas, below the escarpment, just off of 99 HWY, between Creighton and Overfield. I had a 48' tower with a 6 element Colban (made in Dundas I think, and that's a while ago :) ). From there, with the beam fed with 300 ohm shielded twin-lead, and a Sansui TU-9900 tuner, I could listen to WOMJ 104.3 with the beam west facing. Erie was more difficult, Buffalo was a shoe-in. The main problem I had was front-end overload from 95.3, 93.3 and later in years, 102.9. Those who designed the front-end of the receiver placed the RF attenuator AFTER the first RF stage. Using a TFM-2 double tunable FM trap, made by Gerald helped a lot. Also some wide-band switchable attenuation made the situation more manageable. It would have been interesting putting a McIntosh MR-80 on that feed line... But given a clear, un-tinkered with FM signal was an amazing experience.

So... Where you live will determine which stations you'll have problems with.
Depending on your tuner, you may or may not need to notch 94.7 and 95.3., as those two are in line more or less with Buffalo.

The tower also had amateur radio antennas for the HF bands as well as 2m, and a J-Pole for the 220MHz repeater. :)

Cameron

I'm right on the lake.

I can receive 5 HD stations from Buffalo 93.7,94.5,98.5,99.5,102.5 .4 stations have HD2 second channel.I am using a 25 year old radio shack fm yagi that I cut off all the directors off the front to allowed it to mounted high in the attic so i have 3 driven elements and the rear reflector.I am using a Sangean HDT 1 off ebay.I am very pleased with the sound quality.

rob50312, how is the dynamic range of the digital audio on the HD1 feeds.

Have they regurgitated the analogue compressed audio, or left it alone and peak limit the loudest levels? I'm interested in how they're handling things. The DAB feeds I've been listening to seem to be a mix of analogue regurgitation, analogue STL feeds, and some direct digital feeds. Then... There's some feeds that have have the DAB feed sounding a right pigs ear terrible. Don't know how they're managing it, but hey, they must be working towards an engineering equivalent of the Darwin awards.... :)

Cameron

Cameron it would seem that that the dynamic range is being compressed on most stations except WNED the classical station.No need to do this with digital but the signal probably goes thru the same processor.The frequency response is better.I agree if they want HD radio to succeed it should sound exactly as a CD with no compression.

You 2 gentleman seem to have a good grasp on this HD radio and fm antennas, can either of you help me as far as a long range fm antenna. Seems to me there are 2 that i can find that might help me, they are the Dynalab ST2 and the FM Stereo 1/2 Wave Dipole Outdoor Antenna 88-108 MHz. I spoke to salesperson in an audio store who told me microwaves will interfere at my location as i'm right by the water in Hamilton. Thanks guys. :D

Totallyr there are long range outdoor fm yagi made by winegard,Channel master ,Delhi etc.You can order online,ebay etc..In Hamilton area try Neutron electronics but they dont usually stock them but can order it.A 1/2 dipole is not consider long range.RW antenna on ebay has them 40$ plus shipping. A long range antenna will have several elements to it.

I checked out a Nutech Electronics and found a Wade-Delhi QFM-9, hopefully this kind of antenna pointed at Buffalo will still grab Toronto which i'm fairly close to. Thanks Rob

Tottallyr, if that QFM-9 is a 9 element Yagi, then it will have a narrow beam width, and will pull in Buffalo just fine. Unfortunately, it appears to me that Toronto is more or less 90 deg. off the side, and you might experience multipath of the Toronto stations. With a rotator, you'll have a field day with it. You'll beat hands down any cable FM feed. :)

It would be fun to stuff a Dynalab Wordport tuner on that antenna. Or an old McIntosh MR-80...

I used to FM DX from Dundas, and the best I got (and recorded it on cassette too) was ZBM, Hamilton Bermuda. In fact, that sporadic E opening was heard over a large swath of Pennsylvania and NY state during the late spring / early summer of 1981. Ah... Those were the days.... :)

Cameron

Yep, its a yagi, and they have a turnstile model too:

http://www.wade-antenna.com/Wade/VHFFM.htm

A rotor as well, geez i'll have 3 Satellite dishes, 2 CM4228s on their own rotors and add a QFM-9 with a rotor. Planes will think they're flying over NORAD.

A rotor as well, geez i'll have 3 Satellite dishes, 2 CM4228s on their own rotors and add a QFM-9 with a rotor. Planes will think they're flying over NORAD.
Either that or an industry canada monitoring station.... :)

In Dundas, I had a bit of an antenna farm myself... 48ft Delhi heavy-duty tower, 6 element FM beam on top, 10 element vertically polarized 2m beam (amateur), TH3Jr beam (amateur), 80m and 40m dipoles (amateur), 220MHz J-pole for the repeater, (amateur). The top 3 antennas were rotated with a Ham II rotator. As you'll notice, there's a slight theme here.... :)

Cameron

It's fun though isn't it.

Do like this guy in Amsterdam :D

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showpost.php?p=497943&postcount=202

Shouldn't put ideas in my head lol

As is posted, all L-band HD radio in Vancouver is off-air except for CBC. Reception was difficult on the west side of Vancouver.
Deciding to give Sea-Tac a try, I purchased an HDT-1X tuner and hooked it to a 10 element FM yagi in the attic, 80 m ASL, and oriented towards Seattle at 161 degrees. Success! here are the results:

notes: 6 bars = all the bars for HD.
No HD means no HD detected.
0 bars means HD detected but not locked = receiver is in analog mode.
(these might still lock if left long enough)

KPLU 88.5 6 bars
KQMV 92.5 0 bars - 6 bars
KUBE 93.3 no HD - 0 bars
KMPS 94.9 6 bars
KJR-FM 96.5 0 bars - 6 bars
KBSG 97.3 6 bars
KING 98.1 6 bars
KWJZ 98.9 0 bars to 6 bars
KISW 99.9 6 bars
KKWF 100.7 6 bars
KMTT 103.7 no HD - 6 bars
KCMS 105.3 6 bars
KBKS 106.1 0 bars - 6 bars
KWPZ 106.5 6 bars
KWRM 106.9 0 bars
KNDD 107.7 no HD - 0 bars

Day-time reception seems to be better than night-time. The receiver seems to take several seconds to figure out the signal and set up the multipath equalizer. Then bingo - you are in.

No luck with Digital AM stations yet.

Great on the HD info.

Could you compare the analogue vs. the digital feeds?

I'm interested in the sound quality difference, and whether they're simply putting the compressed audio into the digital feed or are they separately engineered?

Thanks for the DAB update. Since I don't travel, I can't verify these things myself. :-)

Cameron

So let me get this right, we still haven't selected and confirmed anything yet in Canada? (IBOC vs DAB?)

So let me get this right, we still haven't selected and confirmed anything yet in Canada? (IBOC vs DAB?)
Canada is a very muddled situation.

Current DAB licencees have been renewed into 2009 (very recently by CRTC).

However, read back through this thread. Industry Canada said that some kind of decision would come down after 2007. Nothing from that corner to date.

Industry Canada also suggested that no new DAB licenses be issued.

I can attest to the fact that most of the Toronto DAB stations are definitly on-air.

Cameron

The ibiquity signal is an on-channel qam that carries the an encoded program identical to the analog program, though it seems about 50 ms behind. (Close enough for switchovers due to fading to take place with little notice.)

The digital audio sounds pretty good - similar to MP3.

Have to give 3 answers to the comparison question.

1) local 60 km line of sight signal - sounds like the digital program may have a slightly lower noise floor plus the high audio frequencies sound sharper and cleaner. I guess they push up little higher than the 15 kHz analog limit. Low audio sounds about equal - this could be due to the progam - with similar results on the subwoofer. I suspect most of the stations are using their existing studio equipment and media to produce the program and this probably runs above 25 Hz.

2) 190 km non-line of sight signal - the distant digital audio is virtually as good as a local (outstanding !!) vs. the distant analog normally sounding mushy and containing an audible noise floor due to multipath impairment. (Normally means always, except during some rare big-signal tropospheric events.)

3) old vs new receiver - comparing the famous old Pioneer TX9500 to the new Sangean HDT-1X I was in for a bonus surprize. In analog mode, audio impairment due to multipath is noticably improved on the HDT-1X.

This last bonus may be thanks to 30 years of development - perhaps a more capable detector, e.g. a digital dsp compared to an analog discriminator; and or use of a lower noise local oscillator and, for analog stereo, digital pilot recovery system. However better, distant analog mode still not as good as digital mode (which is dead quiet).