I live outside of Toronto, I have one set of antennas about 25 miles away at 245 degrees, and another 65 miles away at 175 degrees. In spite of using a cheap-o 4-bay and pointing it at about 200 degrees, I do get a reasonable selection of channels from both directions.
But its not a *great* selection. So I'm thinking of "merging" two antennas. Given the 70 degrees between the two sets, it seems like a perfect setup, right?
Reading HDPrimer's page on the topic:
http://www.hdtvprimer.com/ANTENNAS/merging.html
it seems that you cannot easily combine two antennas unless they are pointed in the same direction, otherwise you will suffer 1/2 signal loss.
But...
First off, what does 1/2 signal loss mean? If I have an antenna with 16 db of gain for a particular channel, does that mean the output is 8 db, or 16-3=13 db?
If it is the later, am I correct in thinking that as long as pointing the antenna at the channel gets me more than 3 db improvement, I should do that, right?
And finally, is any of this correct? Someone once told me the loss is only true if the same channel is on both antennas. In my case with 70 degrees, the reception should be close to zero in the "other" antenna for every channel.
But HDPrimer seems to be suggesting this effect is purely in the combiner, so even if you just put in the combiner and no second antenna it would still suffer the loss. This seems more logical to me, but antenna's and logic do not yet mix in my brain...