The Cliff

The Cliff was Originally Posted on December 28, 2012 by lavarock

Hawaii is built on a cliff, well, at least my island has a large slope. As you leave the summit of the worlds tallest mountain (volcano), you start at 14,000 feet elevation and perhaps 45 miles later arrive at sea level. If you were to continue under water to the foot of said mountain, you would soon reach 20,000 feet below sea level. Many people don’t want to consider that extra 20,000 as height of the mountain, but it does count as the sea floor is “average terrain” and base to the mountain.

Anyway, living a few miles from the ocean means that you are up maybe 1,000 feet. Looking around you have a good view, except for things behind you where the mountain is. Thus, if you are in range of TV stations, you have good TV reception and it seems that the new digital channels pack more power than the analog ones did.

So the guy looked on the website http://transition.fcc.gov/mb/engineering/maps/ and found his address. It showed him that he could receive 11 channels from the neighboring island, Maui. (I can’t get any channels, by the way). he researches antennas and gets one that is powerful enough to get signals from over 45 miles away. He spends about $120 or so including shipping and the antenna arrives. I head up “mauka” to help install and align it.

Things go faster and better than I expect. The antenna comes with a couple page manual, however if you have ever assembled an antenna, it is just folding out the elements and being careful not to bend or break them.

He has a pipe that will act like antenna mast and it is attached to that. I point the antenna in the general direction of Maui, which this day is obscured by clouds, but still, since it doesn’t move, I’m assured it is “that way”.

We fire up the TV and while he tries to find the website again to get channel numbers,I just start a channel scan. Almost immediately, a “2” appears next to the found number of digital channels. I stop the scan and up pops the first channel on the screen. It is perfectly clear and I wonder if he forgot to remove the cable company line from the TV. Nope, it is the antenna and the picture is perfect (it seems lots better than the actual cable channels). I resume the scan and come up with 11 digital and 1 analog channel. We flip through them and they are all the channels we are expected to receive.

To finish alignment I try rotating the antenna over a 90 degree arc and it appears nothing changes. I wonder if he really needed the antenna after all

So now he will contact the cable company and cancel the cable TV, which he pays dearly for and doesn’t really watch. He wants the local channels for news and will rely upon a Roku and some subscriptions for Amazon, Hulu and so on. The antenna cost about 1.5 months of cable TV service and was a one time cost. The yearly cost of the other services is perhaps 2 or 3 months worth of cable TV so he is saving a lot of money each year now.

His antenna may be an overkill, however since he had to have it shipped to the middle of the Pacific, he could not easily return it if it wasn’t strong enough. Although he does not get a lot of wind where he was, he could have still mounted it inside the attic if necessary.

So this is a case where an installation went smoothly and everything worked as desired. Cool huh?