Can you live to close to the transmitters?

[BillyJoeBob]

I live in Southfield, MI and am no more than 5 miles from any of the transmitters. Some are only 1 mile away. Whether I use a small indoor antenna or a large Terk I can not get a setup that gives me a good signal for all channels. I get all but channel 50, move the antenna a bit and I loose 62. Move it some more and 62 comes back but I lose 2 and 50. And so on. When I say loose I mean a signal so low I have video and audio drop outs more than once a minute.

Any ideas?

[SolidSignal_Mike]

If that indoor antenna is amplfied there is a chance you're overdriving the tuner, basically getting too much signal. But I also know that with rabbit ear type antennas, they generally perform poorly for digital reception, and it's hard to get all the channels with it pointed in one direction.

One easy way to test if your getting too much signal is to put a splitter behind the TV to attenuate, or reduce the power of the signal. If you get a better signal, than you were overdriving your tuner. If it's worse than it's the antenna.

The other possible problem would be that your so close that the transmitters are coming from different directions. Check AntennaWeb with your street address and zipcode, to see if they are coming from the same direction.

Your best bet is to put an outside antenna up. At your mileage this would call for a small antenna such as a the DB2 from Antennas Direct, you can keep it low profile by mounting it on this J-Mount. This antenna picks up about 90 degrees wide, most antennas only pick up 30-40 degrees wide.

-Mike

[BillyJoeBob]

Looks like I may have to live without channel 50. Exluding it everything is in an 80 degree window. Is 90 degrees really what they refer to as multi-directional? I was hoping living this close to the stations there would be an antenna that would pull everything in with ease.