Best VHF attic antenna?

I suspect you had a bad connection someplace. Unless you have a tin roof or are trying to receive a low power station almost any antenna should work.

Have you looked at the Local HDTV Info and Reception forum for your area?

KTBC (FOX) on channel 7 is running at a respectable power level for a VHF station, either 30-something kW (a fairly typical number) or about 70 kW (which is getting rather large) depending on whether they've finished building out their construction permit. Either way, you shouldn't need a big antenna at 15 miles. Definitely ask in the Austin thread in the local HDTV reception forum here and see if anyone else has issues with that station.

I don't know about the Clearstream 5, though. It's a new model and I haven't seen any actual measurements of its performance. Its design is very different from the traditional, proven VHF designs. In your situation I'd expect a medium size high-VHF Yagi like the Antennacraft Y5-7-13 to be more than enough, at 1/4 the cost of the Clearstream 5. Or a combination high-VHF + UHF solution such as one of the Winegard HD769x series, but those are more expensive than the Y5-7-13 and you already have a working UHF setup.

How are you combining the signals from the two antennas? For best results you shouldn't use a simple splitter in reverse, but rather something like the Pico Macom UVSJ which is specifically designed for combining / splitting VHF and UHF.

See the other thread you started.

I use a Winegard 7015 UHF/VHF antenna in my attic. It is pretty cheap at $37.99 from solidsignal.com. Has great VHF reception and pretty good UHF reception. Since it receives down to channel 2 it is kind of large as all such antennas are.

Rick R

I live 19 miles from WILL PBS 12.1 (9 VHF.) I recieve it fine with some old rabbit ears found in the garage and moved to the attic. I even recieve 18.1 (11 vhf) from Indiana some nights. Try the rabbit ears spread straight out and adjusted for length to your frequency.

He wants a VHF antenna, not a UHF. I suggest a Winegard YA-1713. Use it along with your current UHF antenna and the UVSJ jtbell suggested and you should be in business.