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[benn600]

We installed a rooftop antenna on the house and are experiencing very inconsistent results.  Sometimes, a few channels are perfect with others showing no signal.  Later, the visible ones switch.  After getting on the roof again and adding another 5 foot of height, making it about 12 feet high from the peak of the roof, it worked quite well with almost all if not every single channel almost perfect.  After adding an anchor from the antenna the channels that come in are varied again.

What is it with these antennas?  Why are they so inconsistent?  Does everybody in the US have a dish service or cable?  We hardly ever watch TV and local channels are all we need but this is turning out to be a huge pain.  We can't get good results across the board.  We are using a full size antenna, not a small square box digital antenna.

[JimH]

You need a pretty clear line of site to the source.  Buildings, or even trees, will affect the signal.  Wind in trees can cause inconsistent results.

Alignment directly to the tower is also important.  Experiment with someone watching TV. 

I've been using an antenna only for the last 4 or 5 months and it's been great.  I cancelled my cable.

[benn600]

We are doing everything possible to avoid having to order a cable or dish service.  Honestly we don't watch enough TV for it to matter and any good shows can be purchased on DVD.  We can buy a season or two of a show a month for the price of the service.  I think we're finding some signal loss somewhere--such as in the placement of the wire--because we had nearly perfect service on every channel until a few things up there got tweaked and taped up for cleanliness.

[Charlemagne 8]

Go to http://www.antennaweb.org/aw/welcome.aspx
and click on "choose an antenna".
You fill out the form (note that a zip code is the only required field) and you get sent to a map of the area. You can then pan around to your specific location and get a map of signals and where they come from, how strong they are, etc.
Trees are a VERY big factor.
The further you are from the signal, alignment becomes a larger factor.