This is an obsolete thread but I have heard of a thing you would not expect and I wanted to share it.
On July 20, 2016 at 08:10, the-one said...
Hi, you haven't indicated where your located as that makes a difference as to distance.
COMPLETELY. Direction, too.
One thing I have found is that you will need to get the antenna at a good height if your not in located in Toronto. I live in Brampton so in order for me to get WGRZ I have in on my roof on a 10 foot pole.
You don't say whether you have tried a four foot pole, a six foot pole, an eight foot pole, or other heights on up to thirty or so feet. You're generalizing, and telling us what seems reasonable.
However....
A guy I used to work for told me of his experience helping a customer receive a TV station out of Salt Lake City, some fifty miles from the customer's residence. He worked for the station and went to the customer's house with a van outfitted with receiving equipment and a crank-up mast.
The customer had an antenna up on a mast, I'll guess at about twenty feet.
When my friend got there, he determined the direction to aim the antenna and cranked it up to something like thirty feet. Reception was crap. He just was not going to get signal out there.
The two of them talked while he started to put things away. My friend lowered the antenna without turning the equipment off, and lo and behold, at about ten feet off the ground he got HUGE signal level!
This, too, can happen. It was in analog days, and I don't know whether the signal was VHF or UHF, but it shows that you have to check things in the real world.