I would like to get some help choosing an antenna. The problem is that one transmitting tower is downtown, and two are on the hills next town. The result is that I have two stations at 145deg and the rest are 314-340 deg.

I'm currently using just a UHF loop antenna, and that works (in terms of not having to reorient the antenna when changing channels), but is just short in terms of getting enough signal to not have dropouts.

Are there any omni antenna's that have antenna gain? Does anybody have experience with a close tower to the rear of a directional antenna, and still getting reception? My understanding is that putting a combiner on two antennas will not work, is that correct?

Thanks for any help.

I would like to get some help choosing an antenna. The problem is that one transmitting tower is downtown, and two are on the hills next town. The result is that I have two stations at 145deg and the rest are 314-340 deg.

I'm currently using just a UHF loop antenna, and that works (in terms of not having to reorient the antenna when changing channels), but is just short in terms of getting enough signal to not have dropouts.

Are there any omni antenna's that have antenna gain? Does anybody have experience with a close tower to the rear of a directional antenna, and still getting reception? My understanding is that putting a combiner on two antennas will not work, is that correct?
If you could post your zip code, we could provide more accurate help. The first issue is whether all your digital stations are on UHF and the second is whether any will be switching to VHF after the analog shutdown in February, 2009.

But without knowing your zip, the Channel Master 4220 2 Bay, 4221 4 Bay, and the more directional 4228 8 bay bowtie antennas are good for picking up stations in nearly opposite directions. You can also take off the reflector screen with a loss of gain to the front, but this creates a vertical stack of bowties with equal gain to the front and back.

If you can, you want to stay away from trying to combine two UHF or two VHF antennas. it can be done, but it can be tricky and usually requires a lot of tweaking.

Zip is 99701, but that will put you the wrong location with all the towers to the north. Sorry I didn't clarify, but I was just looking at the UHF band. The towers are not super far away, the one behind me is ~1mi, and the towers to the north are just under 10mi. Channels are 13,18,22,24,26. So I don't need big antenna, just a bi-directional one. So maybe the bow-ties w/o screen is a good option.

I didn't know about the possible move in '09, where do you find that info?

Are there any omni antenna's that have antenna gain?

No, the gain of an antenna is a measure of it's directionality. A truly omni antenna has no gain.

Zip is 99701, but that will put you the wrong location with all the towers to the north. Sorry I didn't clarify, but I was just looking at the UHF band. The towers are not super far away, the one behind me is ~1mi, and the towers to the north are just under 10mi. Channels are 13,18,22,24,26. So I don't need big antenna, just a bi-directional one. So maybe the bow-ties w/o screen is a good option.

I didn't know about the possible move in '09, where do you find that info?
Hmm, you are in Fairbanks, Alaska. Antennaweb shows only five digital stations and three of those may not be on the air if the TBD entry is correct. You should check with the Fairbanks thread if there is one about the status of the digital stations. The antennweb list of digital stations for your zip code (and adding 300' to the antenna height to get a more complete list):

* yellow - vhf KJNP-DT 4 TBN NORTH POLE AK TBD 269° 10.8 4
* yellow - uhf KATN-DT 18 ABC FAIRBANKS AK TBD 333° 1.7 18
* yellow - uhf KTVF-DT 26.1 NBC FAIRBANKS AK 334° 1.6 26
* yellow - uhf KUAC-DT 24.1 PBS FAIRBANKS AK 320° 6.5 24
* green - uhf KFXF-DT 22.1 FOX FAIRBANKS AK TBD 336° 7.0 22

Looks like 3 of these stations may be waiting for a digital flash cut. You can download the spread sheet of final 2009 channel selections released on August 6, 2007 from the FCC DTV webpage at http://www.fcc.gov/dtv/. The final digital channel selection shows three stations on VHF 7, 9, 11. The KJNP-DT TBN station moves to UHF 20.

You are close enough that the UHF bowtie may work, but it is not optimum. Even a directional antenna will pick up a station 1 mile behind it. At your very close range, any number of antennas will do. Are you looking for an indoor, attic, or outdoor mount options?

I have a DTV tuner and all the station have their transmitters up, except for CBS. But with my current loop antenna, I can only reliably pull in NBC/ABC, which are the 1 mi stations.

A small external antenna is probably the way to go, but they are directional, so I was concerned that I would have to add a rotator, and I don't want to go to that hassle. I don't watch that much TV. If I was in the lower 48 I would just buy a $20 bowtie and try it, but with $25 shipping it is more of an investment to just try something out.

I suppose what I'm thinking is that if I knew it was going to work (i.e. the antenna would get all the channels well) I would bite the bullet and spend the time mounting an outdoor antenna, but because my directional problem makes it seem iffy I'm leaning toward an indoor antenna because I can then repoint it if I have too, even though I don't want to do that.