[GroundUrMast]

As to the politics and economics of powerful forces vying for RF spectrum; If I bought 100,000 all-channel antennas those forces would not notice and would certainly not give up their desire to force broadcast television out of RF spectrum currently assigned. Writing elected representatives and politely expressing my desire that broadcast television be protected as well as helping people obtain reliable OTA reception seem like more reasonable steps to take.

Negative bias toward low VHF reception may exist, but I've not observed it here at TV Fool. What I have seen is a reasonable range of opinion regarding just how much noise margin needs to be engineered into an antenna system in order to provide reliable reception of low-VHF signals.

In this specific case; If WWAZ transmits a signal at the level indicated in the OP's TV Fool report, there should be no problem with reliable reception using a very modest size all channel antenna. Even a properly adjusted rabbit-ear style indoor antenna should be successful.

On the other hand, while the Winegard HD8200U is a powerful deep-fringe antenna, well suited to DX applications, I believe the NM figure listed for WOCK-CD, real channel 4 makes it unreasonable to expect reliable reception of that particular Chicago signal. The listed NM figure for WOCK-CD is -7.6 dB. The published gain of the HD8200U on channel 4 is 6.7 dBd.

My personal goal is to engineer 10 to 15 dB fade margin into a system that is expected to be reliable by consumer standards. So far the math is, -7.6 + 6.7 = -0.9 dB NM which indicates that even if there were no additional noise to account for, the signal is far below the threshold of reliable reception.

When dealing with the additional noise common to the low-VHF band, I believe an optimistic estimate must begin at 13 dB and and an estimate of 20 dB is not unreasonable. So when I apply the minimum fade margin and minimum additional noise factor for the low-VHF band, the net NM value becomes -0.9 - 10 - 13 = -23.9 dB net NM at the HD8200U output connector/terminal.

I think it's irresponsible and detrimental to the reputation of OTA to suggest that some one go out and spend a large sum of money based on a false promise of reliable reception when such reception is so obviously impossible.