Hello folks:

Don't wander to this side of AK too often, but I could use some advice. This looked like a good place to post.

I am one of those Luddites who insists on pulling his TV signals out of the aether instead of from a cable buried in the ground :-) I need to replace the aging TV antenna on our house (one of the larger Radio Shack UHF/VHF/FM directionals... probably 20 years old or more). We are in what I would consider a deep suburban location -- ca. 35 miles NW of Boston, probably even a little further as the crow flies from the towers in Needham and Dedham. We're up fairly high, though.

What would be a good choice of antenna (brand and model) for us?

BTW, I have a brand-new rotator (long story).

Thanks very much for your attention!

Winegard still makes some wonderful antennas. I'm not sure, but I want to say that Universal Radio has them.

Would you recommend Winegard over Channel Master at this point? My father was a big Channel Master fan, but he hasn't installed an antenna in at least 20 years :-)

Several years ago I had a conversation with a local tv repairman who told me he had several discontinued Channel Master antennas, and that the model he had was the best made. Said you could not get such a good antenna anymore. But I really don't know about all that. From some of what I've heard HDTV has renewed the interest in "rooftop" antennas and I would think there would be some very good ones available. I did buy the top of the line Radio Shack antenna c.1995 for my mother and was dissapointed, it wasn't nearly as good as the then 20 year old Winegard it replaced.

I live in a horrible location for off air reception of Chicago stations - on the mirror-image angle for anything on Hancock to ghost off of the Sears tower.

I went to the local RadioShack, and they almost refused to sell me an antenna. However, what I use it for is off-air digital, and that works this way: RadioShack combined V/U, not the biggest, but what would fit in my attic; a separate RadioShack UHF (so I could aim it and move it around a bit - the V/U unit can only be aimed in increments that fit between the trusses); the two antennas feeding a passive U/V combiner. This comes down to the family room on coax, where I have an amplified splitter (RadioCrap) set to min gain to just make up the splitter loss. (By the way, if you need an amp where you are, I do NOT recommend RadioS**t - they have the usual too much gain (so the number looks good to the uninitiated) and prone to oscillate.

With this setup the analog stations from Sears are OK, the analogs from Hancock are varying degrees of rotten (WGN channel 9 won't sync most of the time), but the digitals including the one or two on Hancock are OK, even the CBS on RF channel 3.

I show the digital HiDef to neighbors, and sometimes I'm not sure they believe it (you really don't have cable????? It's in your attic???).

So - the RS antenna may not be the best, but it may be sufficient.