DISQUS

The latest Consumer Reports magazine, and website, favorable rated the Channel master CM-7000, and the Zenith DTT-901 got "pretty good" ratings.

The various blog postings I've seen on the Zenith have been favorable from an RF reception point-of-view.
The zenith box is allegedly available at Best Buy & Radio Shack

The full short listing of 35 boxes is at:

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/electronics-...

If you are using a gummint-issued DTV debit card "coupon", online retailers require that you use it at laest 3 days prior to published expiration date.

My ordered-in-mid-December 2008 coupons just arrived Jan 20th.

Thus far, my Panasonic DVD recorder gets DTV of WGBH 2 & 44, WBZ, WCVB, WHDH, WMUR, WUNI, WSBK, WNDS, WLVI, and Channels 60, 62 & 66.
NotablY absent is WENH-TV, Channel 11, and WFXT-25 reception is spotty.

Using a Terk amplified log-periodic as a settop antenna for now.

Hoping for thisng to improve with outside antenna & booster.

JW

Your report brings two words to mind;

aeolian, and stockbridge.

I know your posting said there was no wind, but a common sight on rural telephone cables are the folded-rhombus aeolian dampers, seen as a sheet-metal triangle in mid-cable span. aeolian is a word not heard very often.

The stockbridge reference is, if I recall correctly, to a "stockbridge device", the dual dumbell-shaped devices frequently seen on high-tension power transmission cables, near the cable/insulatior anchor end near transmission towers.
There are were (I haven't looked lately) some stockbridge devices on the horizontal spans of the roadsign support trusses on Route 3 Northbound in Nashua, between exits 3 and 4.

My source is an answer to query posted by Jeff Harrow, formery of DEC, of theharrowreport.com.
http://www.theharrowgroup.com/articles/20020513...

And I believe your decription of the wave height might be peak-to-trough height.
If the amplitude described was from the resting point-to-peak, it would be "peak height" as specified in electrical nomenclature.

Thanks for the posting, david Your postings do test and clear out the cobwebs.

JW

Having jsut tried it, The Observatory Blog forum is readable to non-members.

Thanks for the listing.

Congrats on being restored.

I love using "howstuffworks.com in an adjacent window.

Mantle-based gas lanterns use a burnable fuel (white gasoline, i.e. "Coleman Fuel", butane (gaz), propane, or kerosene to heat a mantle coated ithe thorium oxide, cerium oxide and magnesium oxide, otherwise known as a Welsbach mantle. The heat from burning the fuel forces the mantle's ceramic oxide components into incandescance.

Every time we have one of these disasters, I renew my respect for the Old Order Amish. And yes, Coleman lanterns are "Amish-legal"; so, by the way, is Briggs & Stratton small engines. But high voltage electricity (110 voilt)? Too modern.

Just drove thru Derry/Londonderry area, jsut south of I-93 Exit 4 on back roads. The signs in peoples' yards are haeartbreaking--"7 days no heat" "PSNH help us". I remember one local commenting "It is like Katrina, without the rain". Egad.

I am glad to see Martin Murray doing somthing that appears to provide real information to the public. His usualy public pronoucements are too simplistic and generalized to be satifying at all. The PDF list he prepared of estiamted Time-to-restore appears to be especially useful.

One should also question PSNH's magnitude of the response to the outage.
I believe that as of Sunday, PSNH had 180 direct employees and contractors on restoration, plus about 120 "mutual aid" responders from Maryland, Ohio, Penna, and 35 more from Conn. P&L, and Northeast Utilities sister company. By comparison, I beleive that Central Maine Power had over 300 employees responding, then adding in mutal aid support. So, compared to CMP, PSNH's response appears to be too little, too slow, too late.

I remember well the December 1996 ice storm, which hit Hudson & Hollis especially hard. We were withou power in North Hudson for 5 full days; our block was eventually restored by a Niagara-Mohawk crew from Syracuse.
Early on in the 1996 storm, Martin Murray said a "small army" of linemen were coming doen from Quebec. When question further, the exact number of his "small army" was 25 2-human crews. Hardy an army, maybe a couple of patrols.

Admittedly the January 1998 ice storm that hit mid-state NH, Maine, upstate NY & Quebec was far worse, espceially in terms of swath of impact.

The CSX Transportation Radio spots are claiming 400+miles/gallon of diesel. I also (vaguely) recall a Popular Science article (It was the cover story, with supporting art) from the late '70s proposing widening the canal to Mississippi-barge size, and moving Pennsylvania coal to NY for processing to diesel & gasoline.

The NYs Barge canal has been very popular with touring recreational boaters for decades; NHPTV ran a half-hour travelogue in 2004 (unsure of exact year) starring singer Johnathan Edwards in "Cruising America's Waterways". Three programs focused on touring the NYS barge (Erie) canal.

IIRC, The most recent "modernization" occured in the 1930s, and it has been in use since. The canal will shortly undergo its winter shutdown, when the Canal Authority raises (removes) the artifical dams on the Mohawk river.

There is a Wal-Mart in Vermont; it is in Bennington, occupying the site of a former WT Grant Store. North of downtown Bennington, on VT Route 7. If memory serves, during the big fight a few years ago where Wal-Mart was attempting to unsucessfully bulldoze their way in with an 80,000-100,00 sq. ft store, the Bennington zoning office pointed out that the 60,000 sq ft former Grant's was approved for retail. All Wal-Mart had to do was fit into the existing building. I'm unsure of the exact date of occupancy, but they've been in at least 3-4 years.

The story reminded me of "new names for old things"; specifically, the old-style rotating-dish radar antenna is now referred to as a "mechanical beam-steered antenna", to contrast it with electronic beam steering, aka a phased-array radar antenna. I recall an ASR-9 spinning away at Hanscom AFB labelled as a "mechanical baem steering test facility" (seen in 1999).