Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I purchased this antenna in the hopes of learning a little bit about how antenna's worked. I never thought it would be anything more than a weekend experiment. The unit arrived in a much smaller package than I had anticipated. Everything was packaged professionally and everything in the box was well labeled. The assembly of the antenna literally took no more than 3 minutes - and I had never see one before in my file. In fact it was so intuitive that I had it assembled before my adult aged son had finished reading the instructions. We then randomly aimed it in 4 directions 0, 90, 180, and 270 degrees using an iPhone built-in compass and just laid the antenna on the floor of the living room and let the TV auto-program the channels. It initially found many more channels than I expected. I expected maybe 4-6 channels. There were about 25 channels in each direction. I didn't count them exactly but I was very surprised. I then proceeded to do some online research to determine the optimum direction to aim based on where the station transmitters were located relative to my physical location. There are many good websites that are available for that research. It took a few hours to gather all that data and make a plan of action. In my case, the best orientation is 350 degree aiming. I ended up mounting it on the ceiling (like a ceiling fan or hanging light) in an unused closet of my apartment. When I completed the installation and scanned for channels, I was amazed ... 117 channels - just in that one direction. I must admit that there were about 30 channels in foreign languages (Spanish and Vietnamese) that were valid channels but not usable by me. The channel farthest away from my physical location was calculated by GPS coordinates to be 126 miles. I live in San Diego and basically everything from LA, San Diego, and Riverside were all received. I then spent the next few hours mapping out all the channels and determining what angles were needed. In total (across all pointing angles), I was able to receive 144 channels with 88 of them in English. It got me thinking ... why the heck am I paying so much for cable? I suspect that if it were attic or roof mounted it might even perform better. In my case - good enough is good enough. I only watch a few hours a week anyway. There are only 2 really small minor things that I would improve. #1 - The rotor that rotates the antenna in the aiming direction ... it would be nice to just enter the angle to aim and have it point in that direction. #2 - The cable that goes from the Antenna to the power source is terminated within the power source (as opposed to being able to disconnect it). So, in my case it is much longer than needed - it causes a big loop of extra cable. I understand that if it went through a connector there would be some RF losses. On the other hand, having that cable 6 feet long instead of ~35 feet long would be a help, and that is on the amplified side anyway. All in all - a really fun experiment and well worth the expense. Good job by everyone involved - manufacturer, distributor, Amazon, and the shipping company. Everyone gets 5*'s on this one.