JB> how come I can only get BRIS-31 when it's raining

 Because it's a cruel world and there is no god.

JB> On saturday afternoon when the commercial stations and ABC are
JB> showing infomercianls or sport and SBS is showing opera,
JB> bris-31 seems to have a documentary etc on... 'course when the
JB> rains tops I could go outside!

 Yair.. I end up watching C31, too. And if the picture isn't fucking
awful, then the sound is so soft you can hardly hear it. I'm only 10km
from the antenna!

 On the other hand, I use rabbit ears.

JB> maybe if's because I'm 100KM north of the transmitter and with
JB> recent construction to the south I probably don't have
JB> line-of-sight from the facia mount Yagi antenna (which is
JB> probably designed for the wrong UHF band and pointing in the
JB> wrong direction too)

JB> or is there something wrong with the antenna that the rain
JB> helps?

 It's not the rain itself, it must be something that comes with rain
and bends the signal for you. Occasionally, a humid "duct" forms that
carries UHF along, but in any case 100km is a long way for UHF. From
memory, 30-km is line-of-sight at ground level. You could try pointing
your yagi *up* a bit. At 100km you are not on line-of-sight, so maybe
you can use tropospheric bending that happens occasionally. If there
is a mountain nearby, point the yagi at that... knife-edge refraction
occurs off the top of mountains. You could try pointign it out to sea,
VHF bounces off the horizon - but basically, if you want reliable
reception on UHF, move about 60km closer to the transmitter, or put
your antenna about a kilometre higher up in the air.

JB> or is there something wrong with the antenna that the rain
JB> helps?

 It's not the antenna, it's the transmission path.

Regards,
Bob
      


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