Omnidirectional vs directional antennas

[kohlio]

I live in the St. Louis area in 63131. Most of the main stations are within 9 miles and another at 15 miles. However, they are pretty spread out (60 to 80 degrees, most are within 60 degrees). In buying an antenna, I can put one in the attic, so I can use an indoor or outdoor antenna. If I consider a directional antenna, I can't find where the angle of reception is given in the specs of the antennas out there. I would prefer not to use a rotor. So, is it possible to use a directional antenna to cover that wide a spread or, because I am relatively close to the sources, is an omnidirectional antenna probably the way to go?

Thanks.

[tigerbangs]

You won't be able to successfully use a multidirectional antenna in an attic without experiencing real multipath issues that are going to cause you headaches. If you are willing to mount a multidirectional antenna on your roof, you can probably pick up everything that you want by using a bow-tie type antenna aimed at the middle of the spread of transmitters. All of the St. Louis stations will remain on UHF after Feb 17, so you may have lucked out here. Your signals are strong, but the reflected signal in the attic is going to make reception very tough. Omnidirectional antenna have no ability to reject multipath, and are never a good candidate for attic mounting.

I would suggest using a Channel Master 4220 2-bay UHF antenna, or the comparable AntennasDirect DB-2 mounted on your roof and aimed in the middle of the spread of stations at approx. 150 degrees. You can get away without a rotator with this antenna, and you can also use a preamplifier like a Winegard HDP-269 if you need to run multiple TV sets from the single antenna.

http://www.channelmaster.com
http://www.antennasdirect.com
http://www.pctinternational.com/channel ... lation.pdf