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Thanks for your feedback. I always appreciate others who take the time to give their thoughts in these forums.
As for going outside, I don't want to do that right now. I've already been that route at my other home. And while it is generally better for LOS - there are the downsides such as climbing ladders to maintain and outdoor setup. I had that issue with my old outdoor Winegard 9095P at my other home. After 6 years of being up on the mast - the antenna needed maintenance; and I was in a 'pickle' because I didn't want to climb my ladder 30 feet off the ground to get to it. Fortunately, at that point, I was selling the home so it became a moot point for my circumstances.
My current setup is actually not so bad in the attic. The signals are there. It's just a matter of trying to balance everything out. Currently, I've got a good lock on WCNC (NBC) Charlotte, but WJZY (Fox) Charlotte is weak. I can make very minor adjustments to my Clearstream 4v that corrects WJZY, but then it comes at the expense of messing up WCNC. Crazy stuff since those two towers are both in the same area.
But to your point about taking the back reflector off my Clearstream 4v, I may do an experiment with just trying the Clearstream 4MAX 'or' Clearstream 2MAX.....just to see how those two alternate antennas 'stack up' to my Clearstream 4v. It's not too difficult of a test - b/c I can always return those antennas back to the store.
This Fall during the repack, the out of market WJZY (Fox) Charlotte is supposedly upgrading their tower to a top mount omni-directional signal. So my issues with that station may resolve themselves with that. And WCNC (NBC) is supposedly increasing their power. So that may help as well.
The signal for my true local WXII (NBC) Winston-Salem is definitely there! It's just the issue of occasional disruptive pixilations during inclement weather. My theory is that it has (at least some) to do with 1) the fact that WXII operates at lower power that some of my other locals and 2) the fact that I cannot point my antenna to the NW for WXII without having a greater (overall) negative impact on my other desired stations.
OTA can certainly be a balancing act and sometimes just settling for compromises because when you've got multiple/desired channels in various directions - there is often times no easy fix.
But I would be interested to know if others have specific thoughts on how the Clearstream 4v stacks up (generally speaking) to the Clearstream 4MAX (or even the Clearstream 2MAX in a general scenario, such as mine.
Accordingly to the specifications, the Clearstream 4MAX has 11dBi gain versus 12Dbi on my existing Clearstream 4v (with the back reflector). But (my personal guess) would be that the Clearstream 4MAX (still pointing in to my SW for Charlotte stations) would help my local WXII to the NW BUT (at the same time) have a negative impact on the out of market Charlotte channels.
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