Thanks for all of the help. So, I don't have a long coax yet, but I tried this: I moved my TV into the bedroom, plugged in the current antenna, and set the current antenna on my bedroom windowsill. That window is south-facing, and I tried to tilt the antenna a little southwest, too (since the antenna farm is southwest of me). It worked better and I got 50-odd channels (mostly in the 20s and above), but, of the four I care about (2.1-NBC, 11.1-CBS, 13.1-ABC, 26-FOX), the only one I got was 26 (FOX). So, no NBC, CBS, or ABC. I'm a little surprised, but I have a few theories about why it's still so bad:
1) My antenna's bad, and I need a better one (I have the
RCA Indoor Antenna, which is a basic rabbit ears plus loop antenna). Solution: get a better antenna. Any suggestions? Any thoughts on whether just a different model, same design is fine, or whether a different design might be helpful?
2) Tall office buildings are blocking the signal (I'm a few blocks north of a bunch of them). Solution: I'm not really sure. Any ideas?
3) The construction of my building (which is brick, at least on the outside) is blocking the signal somehow. But since the antenna is not going through the building, that shouldn't matter (it's going directly through the window, and I am in an outside unit). Solution: not sure here, either. Maybe putting an antenna on my balcony would help? But in that case it wouldn't be pointed the right direction, and it would be lower in elevation than the antenna on my south-facing window.
I'm thinking of just getting the coax cable anyway, and just testing it, both on the balcony and in the bedroom, but given my earlier experiment, I'm not hopeful, at least not without doing something else different (maybe a better antenna?). Would either of the Terks be a good option for a better indoor antenna that might plausibly make a difference?