Thanks for the reply. Yes I have looked at the terrain report, and located my place fairly precisely. It is in the transition from yellow to red, so I know it will be a challenge. I do not have enough experience (yet!!) to know if it is doable or not. As you may have noted from the spreadsheet (sorry about the difficulty opening; I have Office365 which uses the xlsx extension which does not seem to be allowed by TVFOOL, so I changed it) I get some channels from Kansas which is several hundred miles away! But those mountain peaks are a pain. I still cannot understand why I got a pretty good signal inside.
Inside I could easily get a viewable picture, just not good enough to record with the SiliconDust unit. I wonder if diffraction over the peaks is causing "hot" (and "cold") spots in the signal. To see the actual view, go to the webcam at
www.apcat.org. I would move the antenna mount except it's weighted down with 140 lbs of concrete blocks and would need to be completely taken apart, moved and put back together...what a pain.
Anyhow I just put up the RCA ANT751R which I understood to be a high VHF antenna with a 7.5 dB gain. Still no joy. I get fewer channels, but surprisingly close to the 8-bay. Nothing whatever on VHF 9, just a bit on 7, but not enough for an image.
Not sure what to do next; just give up?