Thinking of putting up an outside antenna

[radiotvnut]

In my area, with a set of rabbit ears, I can receive the following local stations: WTOK, WMAW, WMDN, and WGBC. If I'm lucky and the antenna is situated correctly, I can receive WRBJ; which, I think is around 80 miles away.

Several months ago, I was bored and decided to experiment. I connected the same antenna to a long piece of coax cable and stuck the antenna, as high as I could reach, in an oak tree by my shop. All the local stations came in with a stronger meter reading and the distant WRBJ (Magee, MS) came in better, even during the day. At night, WHLT-22 (Hattiesburg, MS) popped in for a little while.

I just re-ran my experiment and WRBJ still comes in good (signal strength in the 70's); but, I can't get quite enough signal strength to bring in WHLT-22. There is also another Hattiesburg station, WDAM-7 (VHF frequency), that gives a slight deflection of the signal meter; but, not enough to produce a picture. Both WHLT and WDAM fluctuate between 0 and 12 on the signal meter of my digitalstream box.

Back in the analog days, it was not unusual to receive both WHLT and WDAM during night time and early morning hours with a set of indoor rabbit ears. The picture was always very noisy; but, watchable. Sometimes, I could also receive WLOX-13 out of Gulfport, MS and some other stations out of MS and LA.

I'm thinking that if I install a decent outdoor antenna, I will stand a better chance of bringing in these other stations. WDAM carries "This-TV" on it's subchannel and I think I remember WHLT carrying RTV on one of it's subchannels. So, what do you guys think? Would I benefit from an outdoor antenna mounted to my workshop or would I be wasting money? It would be nice if I could pull in these other stations, even if it's only for a few hours at night.