[jake14mw]

My house has a few tall trees next to it and between it and the broadcast towers. Will the trees cause lots of problems with getting an OTA HD signal?

 

[bierboy]

I can only speak from my experience. Here's my setup -- CM 4221 in the garage rafters (about 12 feet off the ground), no pre-amp, towers all from one direction (all UHF channels - about 15 miles away), and moderately-large trees across the street from my garage in direct path to towers. I still get all the DTs with my Sammy SIR-T151. No drops, good signal strength.

 

[Neil L]

If the antenna is behind trees, it is in overlapping fields: a weak field that passes through the trees plus a weak field that is diffracted around the trees. Overlapping fields are complicated, with strong spots and weak spots. If you get a UHF antenna to work behind a tree, you will likely see dropouts when the wind blows because the strong and weak spots will move around. This is especially true with low power stations. I have a VHF station on channel 9 that is broadcasting with 9kW from 30 miles away. I'm behind some tall trees, and although I'm not sure the trees are at fault, I have problems with drop-outs on this channel. I don't have this problem on all my other stations that are UHF and coming from another direction, over 70 miles away!