Can a 500 mile TV antenna work for radio? TV is digital and the signals are separated, but how will you separate radio stations that have the same frequency?
Plus radio antennae have one contact but coax tv antenae have two? Or do they? How would you connect it?
I don't understand a word of your questions.
What is a 500 mile tv antenna? In analog days I once watched Montreal and Burlington VT. tv for an hour in Minnesota but that was a rare skip event.
An antenna 500 miles long, I'm guessing.
Me too, but that is just nuts.
Sounds pretty "sanguine" to me...
I use a pair of rabbit ears for indoor FM radio, works pretty good!
Oh. They are talking of distance to the transmitter. I think now I understand the OP.
]> Can a 500 mile TV antenna work for radio? ]> TV is digital and the signals are separated, but how will you ]> separate radio stations that have the same frequency?
It can and does. I have listened to shortwave radio transmissions across the Atlantic.
You can not separate them, except by using a directional antena. So stations have to use different frequencies, or different time slots.
Notice that to reach those distances they bounce the signal on the ionosphere (yes, the earth is round). They choose a frequency that bounces on one or another of the layers, according to their intended listener target (the distance, and direction).
Notice that there is a distance where there is no reception: there is first the area in sight of the antena, with good reception. Then the waves go a bit down the curve of the earth, then they get into space. In this area there is no reception, which could be precisely 500 miles. Then the first ionosphere bounce area starts.
Look for "skip zone".
]>
]> Plus radio antennae have one contact but coax tv antenae have two? ]> Or do they? ]> How would you connect it?
You need an adapter.
Design of antenas is not a trivial matter, you need to read a lot.
Yup.
A similar thing *can* happen occasionally, for higher frequencies (VHF and UHF television and radio signals). In those frequencies it's usually referred to as "ducting" in the troposphere - the creation of a refractive channel which can propagate these signals well beyond their normal line-of-sight range.
Under exceptional ducting conditions, VHF signals can travel from (e.g.) California to Hawaii - there are a few such 2-meter radio contacts on record.
The same phenomenon can allow TV and FM-radio signals to be picked up, occasionally, well beyond their usual range limit (100 miles or so on VHF).
It's not something to count on, though. It's relatively rare, depends on the season and weather and atmospheric conditions, usually fairly short-lived, and you can be utterly certain that the duct will fall apart (and you'll lose the TV signal) just before the Big Reveal at the end of the episode :-)
When there's no tropo-ducting taking place, the chance of a so-called "thousand-mile antenna" picking up a useful TV signal from 1000 miles away is probably about as good as your chance of winning the Powerball lottery using a grease-soiled receipt from your local hamburger shack.
:-)
Long ago, in the south east of Spain we got TV interference from Italy, in the summer. That was in the VHF band, probably channel 3. The band was later dropped (it required big antenas), and today it is digital anyway.
I could miss Captain Kirk engaging or Piolín (Tweety) seeing a nice kitty and instead hear/see some commercial in Italian :-(
aka
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