(ABC 6 NEWS) – In Travis Stiller's line of work, business is looking up. He installs TV antennas. Next month's DTV conversion gets the credit for his busy days.

With analog, the quality of your antenna played a big part in the quality of your TV signal. The antenna also plays a big part in DTV.

"You want a UHF-VHF antenna that has a 75 ohm preamp. What makes the difference between a good one and a bad one is how many elements you have," says Stiller.

The elements are the fingers on the antenna. Long ones are for VHF reception, and short ones are UHF. One common mistake people make is in pointing the antenna.

"Catch the signal in the “V.” Don't point it like an arrow in the direction because that would be actually backwards," says Wendell Nelson, Chief Engineer at ABC 6 News.

That's important, because digital is more directional, and unforgiving, than analog. Your antenna doesn't have to be very much off-the-mark for your digital signal to go away.

The signal has to be strong, you have to check the meter in the TV or the converter box," says Nelson.

"When it starts pixilating or turns into a checker-board, you just move it a couple of degrees one way or another, it'll clear it right up," suggests Stiller.

Right now, the ABC 6 broadcast tower is west of Austin, near Myrtle. On June 12th, our new transmission tower will be up and running.

"Southeast of Grand Meadow, so then everybody will basically want to switch the antenna pointing, especially people on the east side of our coverage area," says Nelson.

It should help improve signal coverage for most of our viewers, but those on the far western side of the ABC 6 coverage area may lose our signal.  If so, they will need to direct their antennas toward Minneapolis or Iowa stations to receive free over-the-air programming.

With the death of analog three weeks away, Travis still knows it could be awhile before he sees another weekend off.