Generally speaking, the higher the better.

For example, our local "cable company" picks up the big city stations with
antenna arrays that look to be about 40' above street level. That part of
the county is about 50' above sea level.

I have a neighbor who at one time put a 40' tower next to her house.
That's definitely not DIY work so I'm sure the cost was in the $thousands.

For myself, I put up a "tripod" base on my roof ridge with a 6' mast and
rotator on top with another 6' mast. Because of overlap,etc. the antanna
(a middle of the road Radio Shack) is about 10' above my roof.

It's a good idea (even if not the law where you live) to run a ground wire
from the antanna mast to you house ground where the power comes in. For
myself, I did that and also drove in extra rods. I ran grounding cable to
both ends of the house.

Get good antanna cable. "Quad Shield" RG-6 is pretty good.


wrote in message
...
I want to install an outdoor antenna for HDTV reception. I live in a
one story home and I am in Santa Clara, CA. Most of the stations are
in SF which is about 40 miles away.

It just doesn't cost that much to install an antenna like I have. (Less
than $500.) It will surely get more stations than you get now and you can
then decide for yourself whether it's worth the cost to go higher.

At 40 miles, I don't think a "high gain" antenna will buy you much.

You might get lucky and find you can get marginal signals because of special
circumstances with your location.
In our case, the Potomac river seems give us better than expected reception:
I have picked up Philadelphia and Harrisburg (PA) early the the mornings.
If I really,really wanted to "get" these stations I might try getting a
larger antenna.