I have used the “flat type” TV UHF antennas for fixed mount for quite some time. They do OK with high band VHF, no where near what a specific VHF antenna would receive. Their stack ability is good for doubling the gain. Flatties also work well in camouflage, where you can mount them on a flat wall down low, if circumstances allow.
Currently, my coat hanger one doesn’t use a reflector, so it is seriously compromised with F/B ratio, but seems to work well for what I want, sniffing the air.
My home made coat hanger DTV flatty is now standing ready for the Christmas HDTV ... To sniff out how good the area is with a really good tuner for digital OTA. If it’s good enough I may actually buy an antenna, probably a DB4.
It’s true, antenna technology hasn’t changed much in a very long time. Once the equations were known, and it was simple to build them, antennas seemed to be size dependent for the most part. As a ham, antennas are something you deal with a lot.
I am finding the OTA signals are far better with HDTV than is cable or satellite. Most cable and satellite is compressed 720 and most OTA is 1080i, at least around here it is. I canceled my DirecTV because of that. Well, that and the fact that there is nothing on it worth watching. We get videos from the local library, which produces much better picture and sound quality. I have a Christmas Blu-ray up scaling DVD to carry on with the tradition. Cheap compared to subscription TV -— LOL.
The DB4 looks nice in terms of capture area and I do see more of that type going up around here as more people get OTA DTV. I did investigate the local frequency assignments and the VHF stations on CH 9 & 13 are currently broadcasting DTV on temporary UHF assignments but after Feb. they will be going digital on their legacy channels - so some of what folks in this area see now will be changing in the near future, and depending on where they are they may need to change antennas again.
The stations that were already on UHF channels deployed DTV on channels near their legacy assignments and it looks as though they will be staying on the new channels after the transition. 16 will be on “real” channel 17, 28 on 29, 34 on 31, and so on. Interesting also (at least to me), a couple of those stations have analog broadcasts with 1.6 and 3 MW ERP and post transition will retain lower transmitted ERPs of 100 & 250 KW if the data I have is correct. The engineers at one of those stations are probably thankful for that - they have had a number of transmission line fires in the winter when the towers collect ice.
My HDTV is a 32” Westinghouse from Wal-Mart. That was what Santa Claus could afford last year and is closest in size to the 26” one eyed monster it replaced. It is only 720p and the refresh rate could be better, but it renders a 1080p football game or NASCAR race without any pixellation, and also renders split signal analog 480p from the DVD very nice - crisp edges and smooth motion, and when the source file has a proper 16:9 native aspect ratio it's a pleasure to watch. S-video is slightly less good and 480i from broadcast or single hose analog video isn't good at all - the graphics chipset probably doesn't have the power or codespace to do much with that, but that's not what I bought it for.
I have signed up for my converter box coupons. Should be something out there that’ll be fun to experiment with.