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Chandra,
Let's see if I can help you with the information that's been presented so far, organized by the questions you still have:
1) You are correct about what the preamp is. However, there must have been power provided to it via the old wiring that you replaced. Typically, there is a power brick installed near the TV (for convenience) that ties to this wiring. Whether that thing still exists or not is not important, as you no longer can feed power to the old preamp via coax cable.
2) Your first impression of what a balun is is correct, and it is the barrel-shaped object with the twinlead "pigtail" that you used to connect the coax to the preamp. However, it does nothing more than that. kb2fzq described why the balun prevents you from being able to power the old preamp.
3) I'm not surprised that there was little difference to the first six stations on the list - you already have a clear shot (LOS means line of sight) at them at 12 feet. We were wondering if there would be any material improvement in the next group of stations that have to clear 2 obstacles to get to you. Apparently not.
4) The AntennasDirect XG-91 comes with a balun, so here's how you connect everything: Attach the balun provided with the antenna at the correct place; mount the ChannelMaster 7777 pre-amp on the tower, and run a short piece of coax cable from the antenna's balun to the pre-amp; attach the cable from the house to the pre-amp's output; inside, install the beige-colored power supply near the TV, connect the cable from the outside to the right point on that device, then run a short piece of coax from the other point to the TV.
5) Depending on the type of coax you have, you will lose from 5 to 8 dB of signal for every 100 feet. Assuming worst-case, you would have enough amplification to account for the losses in 300 feet of cable. Since higher is generally better for UHF reception, that tower should be an OK place to mount to if the cable run is less than 300 feet.
6) Tigerbangs was correct - one of the analog translators you can pick up (channel 42) relays KTGF, the Fox affiliate. The TVFool report does not usually list the Network for translators, hence your confusion. Tigerbang's post lists what each of those six translators carries, and his antenna recommendation is for picking up those translators, not the originating stations on down the list.
Good luck!
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