All great questions!

You want to pick the frequency / channel that originates from the National Weather Service office that covers the area in which you live. Here is Colorado there are three such offices – the Denver office covers NE Colorado, Pueblo covers most of southern CO and the Grand Junction one covers the western slope.

If you go to http://www.weather.gov and click on the national map for where you live, the map will then take you to the appropriate local office’s website. Then, listen on your radio to the broadcast – they will periodically announce where the broadcast is originating from. If it is the office you found on the Internet, then you are listening to the right frequency.

As long as you are listening to the proper office’s broadcast, you should be good to go.

Regarding your reception problem… This is not uncommon as the NWS radio transmitters cover large areas of land so it is of course hard to cover every area 100%. Even here in the north Denver area we resorted to setting up an external antenna to improve reception. In our case, we bought what is basically a CB antenna, put it outside on the fence and ran cable to the radio inside.

The WR-100, and many other weather radios, do have an antenna jack on the back. Using that, you have a couple of options. Radio Shack sells antennas that work well to improve reception and they would have the connectors you need to hook it up. Also, the frequencies the weather radio uses are actually between TV channel’s six and seven. TV antennas can be hooked up to these connections and will sometimes work to improve reception.

BTW, the Denver office has some good information on their website here: http://www.crh.noaa.gov/bou/?n=nwrnoaa

I hope all that makes sense – if not, please don’t hesitate to ask any other questions.