[ADTech]

Couple of comments, even thought the OP is not able to reply directly. You're welcome to reply via PM (if it works) and I'll paste in any replies:

1. "I applied 4 weeks ago but haven't been activated yet" - Been a lot of that going on for a couple of years. Sadly, it seems the site owner no longer has either the time or inclination to manage either the site or the underlying database. Hasn't been a moderator present for several years, the last two apparently drifted away (or whatever).

2. "Channel Plus DA-506BID DA" - I've never heard of it, but its published specs don't leave me impressed as far as its maximum input power.

3. "Lime PA which Solid Signals had on sale" - Surely a typo as I can't find anything on the SS website called by that name.

4. "It looks like I need higher gain in at the antenna level" - Both unlikely and probably impractical. Your existing antenna is about as good as it can get in regards to net gain on high-VHF short of either building your own or building a dedicated array of multiple high-VHF band antennas. There is a Chinese-made import that's being sold by various sellers, but it is not clearly documented as to what to expect from it in regards to performance.

5. "Prior to the neighbors house being there I was getting a signal at a much lower height. Now 58' AGL gets it, 54' AGL doesn't." - Sounds more like you have a location problem than anything else. Relocating a tower is not easy, but it likely what you need to do.

6. You have an FM station (105.9) very close by that would suggest that an FM trap would be prudent. While it's frequency is such that its 2nd harmonic doesn't fall into the channel 12 bandwidth, it's pretty close and there is a potential for it mixing with some other nearby signal to produce intermodulation products within the channel 12 bandwidth. It's also possible that it's forcing your aim into some compression and that's causing the difficulties with channel 12. Like I said, a trap would be "prudent" but the math isn't crystal clear as an indicator. The hard part would locating the trap, sometimes you can find left over Radio Shack units on ebay. I also have no idea how the 7698 would react to FM signals but I suspect it would receive them rather strongly but at odd angles to the expected performance that is documented. Of course, since FM is out of the design band for that antenna, Winegard did not document that particular aspect of its performance.