Some tasks accomplished and …

… Others were not….

Today I was able to play some radio, head out for a good bike ride, set up a portable station in a park along with visit a local television station.  The antenna work did not get done but I have hopes for early Sunday am…

It took me roughly 45 minutes to head from my place to the Market Media Mall in Ottawa for my visit to the A Channel studios… The time could of been a bit quicker but for my first real ride of the year….  I’ll take it…

Although Google maps don’t always take bike paths into concideration, the route I took is almost the same as the one they suggested.

After my visit to the A Channel Studios where I met many of their on air personalities and I can offer the following commentary…after an approx 45 minute wait to get inside the doors (yes it was that popular) we were brought into the studio and introduced to Kurt and Sandra.  They gave us a brief lowdown on what we would be seeing today and they we were put in the capable hands of Leanne who would be our groups tour guide for the duration of our tour.  We were shown the newsroom where we met Bill who does the weather and Tony who is one of the news anchors.  We were shown how the tools of the trade are used including the “Green Screen” A couple of observations I could make would be that “Tony” and “Bill” both look taller on the air than they do in person but they are great guys to talk to…  We were also shown some of the production staff such as directors and editiors who showed us how they create the product that the on air people give to us.

To be honest this was a plug for their promotion Support Local Television and lots of the comments and statements were made to that end but their comments did make sense and I have commented on this in the past.

After the tour concluded I rode over to the QTH  of Jerry VE3QSO and we set up his portable station in the park across the street from his place.

The route I took is here

We set up his 100W K2 Transceiver along with a W3EDP end fed antenna supported by two 31 foot Jackite Poles.  This was the first time we had set up this equipment and it worked great.  Contacts were made on 20m ssb and 80m ssb which proves everything worked up to expectations.  After playing radio and ragchewing we broke camp and I helped Jerry take the toys home then I jumped back on the bike and headed back home…

The route I took is here

So as you can see it was a great afternoon with a total bike ride of almost 14kms.  Complete Route shown here and more importantly with NO CHEST PAINS!!! This one is important as its one of the first rides of the year and although I was not expecting any problems … the threat of a “screamer” is always there.  The good doctor wants me to exercise and lose weight for a reason!

So all in all it was a great afternoon….

73bob

The rest of the weekend

Remembering the famous line about “The best made plans of mice and men often go astray” here is what I hope will happen this weekend…

Saturday early morning or Sunday early morning I hope to get the weighted line over a tree branch in my front yard.  This will allow me to get the end of my Inverted “L” about 10 feet higher than it is now.  This will make the “L” part of the antenna about 30 feet above ground compared to the 21 feet (approx) that it is now.  Seeing that my agreement with my landlord about antennas is “out of sight and out of mind” as I am going to be working in front of my gardenhome rather than in the obscurity of my back yard I have to find a time when there are not as many prying eyes watching the fool with the rope…

I have an outside hope that once I get the antenna up that little bit higher either my receive will improve with the added altitude or because I will be moving my antenna higher and hopefully further away from whatever is causing my noise level…

On Saturday afternoon I plan to ride over to the local A Channel Studios to show my support of local television.  To see what I am talking about please follow this link…

Saturday evening will be spent recovering from the Saturday afternoon Bike Ride and then on Sunday I think an afternoon in the park might be a fun thing to do…

Hoping all will happen as planned…

73bob

Cable TV vs “On Air” Television

Now the debate on this topic has been going on for a while now with the broadcasters saying that the cable companies do not pay for their local content but they do charge for the same content.

Many of the smaller market local station are having great financial difficulty and are on the verge of closing down.

The Broadcasters would like to be able to charge the cable companies for re transmitting their signals which only seems fair to me as the cable companies charge for what they re broadcast.

Now what you might ask brought these comments on???

If you remember yesterdays post…

“Yesterday while the contractors were doing their thing in the backyards such as digging holes, adding drainage stone and then backfilling somehow they managed to cut through my cablevision wire.  This cut my television access greatly along with cutting my internet access totally…”

This mean that on Monday evening I had no cable,  this meant no internet (which was a large inconvience) but it also meant no TV.  Normally this would not be an issue but the Vancouver- Chicago hockey game would be on later in the evening and I had no way to watch it…

Now fortunately I had a small amount of masting just sitting in my back yard (one of the benefits of being a ham) and sitting in the basement was a run of 75 ohm coax and a new antenna which would be heading down to my trailer once Liz and I figure out what we are going to do with it .  (Yes we are starting late but we are debating the use of it this season…)  Anyhow….  I quickly disconnected the non functioning cable line from the house….  Attached the antenna to enough masting to get it above roof height and aimed it west ( There are two transmitter sites in the Ottawa Area and they are both west of me) and then connected the feed line to where the cable used to be connected to…

Now I no longer had internet but I did have  excellent signals from the following stations/networks from their retransmitters in the Ottawa Area.

CBC, GLOBAL, CHCH HAMILTON, CTV, TV ONTARIO,  OMNI ONE, OMNI TWO, A CHANNEL OTTAWA,  CITY TV TORONTO.

Outside of the fact I could not get CNN we really did not miss much…

In addition there were about 5 or so French Networks that were also out there but as I don’t speak french too well along with the fact that since the Montreal Canadians did not make the playoffs,  the Montreal Expos left town and the Montreal Alouettes are not playing football yet,  there does not seem to be much sports out there for me to watch…  Thats one of the nice things about watching sports on TV …  Its the same in either official language….

If I had aimed it South East then I could of picked up a PBS Station in Vermont along with CTV Montreal and NBC Plattsburgh NY.  Aiming it South West could of kept the local Ottawa Stations and added CBS Watertown, PBS Watertown, ABC Watertown but as all the American Stations are switching (or have switched) to Digital TV for me its a moot point for now.

So lets get back to the channel list…  The Global Network is having financial issues and so is A Channel.  I can’t remember the last time I saw local programming on CBC Ottawa but CTV Ottawa does a fair job squeezing in some local items and they have an excellent local news…  However if you think of it…  If the A Channel folds then we will only have one source of local programming in Ottawa…

Whats my point here….  With the recent economic crisis thats suddenly become part of our lives sooner or later people are going to have to make cuts to get by…

If the local broadcasters are off the air, if stations close then what will people watch who can not afford the luxury of Cable TV or Satellite TV?  What about local news?

Now I have been told that the Cable Companies pay the speciality networks for their programming.  That means that if you watch a hockey game on TSN or anything on TSN the cable distributer pays TSN.  However if you watch the same hockey game on CBC the feed is free to the cable companies.  However the last time I checked my bill we do get charged for the “Basic Cable Package” which has just a little bit more than I can get with the outdoor antenna.

I remind you of my comments earlier in this posting…

“The Broadcasters would like to be able to charge the cable companies for re transmitting their signals which only seems fair to me as the cable companies charge for what they re broadcast.”

Now to be honest this is not at the rant level yet…  This is just putting an example of what could happen…  I have nothing against my cable provider who does provide excellent service…  I do wonder why they are charging me for something they get for free and I also wonder if the local channels (like A Channel) folds will I get a discount as there is less to watch…

If you have the ability to try some TV DX why not give it a try.  You know the propagation patterns for the television frequencies….  you should know how to install and aim a beam antenna….  You might be shocked and suprised by what you can see without cable or sats….

73bob