Well I have two airports about 10 miles away each (not really that far?) with mostly housing and quite flat terrain between us.
The radar and approach frequency that we have here covers both airports, and the
hand-held receiver that I have, picks up the pilot side without a problem, however where the controller should be speaking is completely silent. It's probably down to the size of the scanner, I'm not sure about attachments or if adding an additional antenna is even possible. Ideally i'd like to avoid putting an antenna outside, due to the unwanted attention that it would probably attract. Can you put aerials up in your roof-space?
I was recently about four miles from the airport and had no problem picking up the tower and ground transmissions, and then I really did realise that I should have bought a scanner ages ago!!
Thanks for your help so far Dave, it's much appreciated.