Basically, you want to point the antenna towards the transmitting towers and receive as strong a signal as you can. The closer you are to the tower, the stronger the signal will be. Ideally you should have a clear line of sight; obstacles will weaken the signal if not obscure it altogether. Large objects nearby that don’t block the signal but are taller than your antenna, like mountains and office buildings, might cause reflections. Reflected or "ghost" signals arrive at your tuner along with the original signal and can confuse the receiver. Pointing the antenna in precisely the correct direction will help eliminate these reflected signals and give you more reliable DTV reception.

Figure 2: A stacked "bow tie" antenna like this one (model 3021) will receive UHF channels.

Antennaweb.org will give you the compass directions for your local stations so you can easily point your antenna. Using the website, you can determine the distance to your local transmitter based on the city the channel is transmitting from and the size of the antenna that the site recommends. Larger antennas are more directional, which means they’ll reject those annoying reflected signals. They also have more gain, which means the antenna will obtain a stronger signal from distant or otherwise weak transmissions. Smaller antennas are less directional, which means they can pick up transmissions that come from different directions, but have lower gain (the signals you get won’t be as strong) and don’t reject reflections. An antenna preamp can help you boost the signal level, so long as you can receive a reasonably clean signal to begin with.