I hardly pick anything up on airband receivers unless I'm practically at the airfield
Build yourself a better antenna. It took me about 10 minutes to create a simple dipole antenna from stuff I had lying around anyway. I put it in the attic and the reception quality increased dramatically. I'm 15 km away from Schiphol and I can even pick up the departure ATIS.
But, yes, VHF is line-of-sight so regardless of antenna quality, there will be transmitters which you'll simply not be able to receive.