Apartment, wooded hillside, locusts and black death

[g1eagle]

I seem to have everything stacked against me. I live on the 3rd floor of a 14-floor apartment building. My window faces a wooded hillside, with the trees being maybe 40 feet away. I am looking for advice on which antenna to try. Since I will have to order anything I choose, I am trying to get it right on the first try so as to save return shipping fees and time. If any of you can offer helpful advice, I would be very glad to have it. Here are the facts:

1. As I have said, my location is in a tall apartment building, toward the bottom, facing a wooded hillside. The coordinates are 38.900425,-77.2039 or 2251 Pimmit Drive in Falls Church, VA.
2. According to tvfool's radar image, all the stations that are important to me come from the same quadrant. Alas, my window faces south and the TV signals are all coming from the northeast.
3. As a test, I got a little antenna to see if I could pick up any signal at all. It was just a crappy little thing (a "folding" HDTV antenna) to try as an experiment. If held up at the top 3rd of the large plate-glass window in my living room, the antenna allowed the TV to identify and program the local stations. The signal was enough to go for a few seconds at a time with clear picture and sound. The rest of the time, it was pixels, stuttering, and lost signal. I should point out that I was hand-holding the antenna through all this, so slight movements may have affected things.
4. This encouraged me that it MAY be possible to have a decent signal with a good antenna. I have seen good reviews on the Winegard SS-3000 and the Terk HDTVa. I have also seen plans to build a homemade antenna out of coat hangers (http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/0 ... tenna.html). This latter option would not be very attractive in my living room, but if it is the only thing that works, I would be willing to do it.

So, have any of you got advice for this unworthy?

P.S. I forgot to mention that a couple of stations that I might like to watch are broadcasting in the upper VHF range nowadays.

[tigerbangs]

OUCH! You have painted a pretty grim picture: one for which I don't have any real solution. The very best indoor antenna is only fractionally better than the WORST indoor antenna. If you are on the 'wrong' side of the building, face a hill immediately near your apt, I would say that you don't have much of a chance of seeing decent reception. You might inquire as to whether or not your condo building has a master TV antenna installed, but otherwise,, I'm afraid that you will probably need to go with subscription TV to get a reliable picture.

[g1eagle]

I was operating under the hope that if I could aaaalmost get a reliable picture with an inferior antenna that I could get a reliable picture with a better antenna. Do you think it is not worth pursuing? I don't want to waste money and resources, but nor do I want to pay $60 per month, which is the cheapest level of service that Cox offers where I could get HD signal.

[tigerbangs]

If your television has a built-in digital tuner, then yiou can subscribe to COX's basic service, and your TV tuner should be able to find the local HD channels, as cable companies do not encrypt the local HD versions of network stations. Don't let them rent you a converter: you don't need it to see the DC HD locals: just rescan your tuner after the cable TV is installed.

[wvfellow]

I seem to have everything stacked against me. ...
As a test, I got a little antenna to see if I could pick up any signal at all. It was just a crappy little thing
So, have any of you got advice for this unworthy?

You have got to retry with an amplified antenna before you give up. I had good success with the Philips SDV6122, which are available cheaply (about $15 w/ UPS delivery), if you do some bargain hunting. The better ones sell for $35 to $50 new and feature ultra-low noise (about 1 dB) affecting their high-gain (about 20 dB) amplifiers. But just try a cheaper one first (about 2.5 dB noise), because the expensive refinements may not actually be needed.

Of course, my situation isn't nearly as dreadful as yours is, but you have got to try an amplified antenna before giving completely in.

[g1eagle]

Here is the update:

I bought a radio shack antenna that looks kinda like a E-2 Hawkeye. It's model #15-1892. I get decent reception most of the time. Normal TV watching is interrupted every few minutes by a little pixelation, but it is serviceable for my needs. Getting the VHF stations in this area takes millimeter-perfect position of the long poles.

The drawback is bad weather. I am not sure if it is the cloud cover causing signal bouncing or the motion of the trees on the hill outside the window, but I was completely unable to maintain a signal last weekend when it was windy and raining. So, no football that Saturday...

I could try the HDTVa antenna that gets all the good reviews, but I am doubtful that there would be enough improvement to warrant bothering with it.

All of my TV watching is done with the gain set to 0. Any gain at all makes the signal worse, as the problem with my location is not signal strength but clarity. If there was a smarter antenna on the market that could clean up signal, that would be wonderful.

[tigerbangs]

I'm glad that you found a solution. Sometimes, you can do well with an indoor antenna, but the situation vaies according to many factors, and the only way to know for sure what will work indoors is to try out different options. Congratulations.