So since I've got the fever, I decided to go up and grab the old coat hanger antenna that I had mentioned in my first post out of the attic, and looked around the house to see what I could use as a reflector. Aluminum foil seemed like an easy choice to experiment with.
I hooked up the antenna (no reflector), aimed it due west, and ran a scan. No luck with NBC - not even a weak pixelated picture - nothing. I ripped off two sheets of aluminum fool, taped them loosely to a 1x3 and held about 8" behind the antenna, and ran another scan. Not only got the NBC station (12.1), but got a two stations from Roanoke VA as well!
I taped the aluminum foil to some cardboard and screwed the 'reflectors' to the 1x3, headed up to the attic with some long screws, and screwed the antenna and reflector roughly into place, roughly due West.
Re-scanned channels - got 43 channels (including the sub channels), including some from Raleigh which I did not expect due to the reflector. Nearly all are solid. I've yet to run through the splitter to hook up the HDHR's though and don't know how reliably they will come in over time (especially since it's night time now), but I'm pretty excited. Here is what I'm getting:
2.1 CBS
4.1 PBS
5.1 CBS
7.1 CBS
8.1 FOX
10.1 NBC
12.1 NBC
16.1 ION
20.1 CW
26.1 PBS
28.1 MyN
43.1 TCT
45.1 ABC
47.1 ION
48.1 MyN
50.1 FOX
http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wr...2df901b4311416
Hope it holds up... but even if it doesn't, it makes me pretty confident that the DB4e will do the trick.
Thank you all for the info and advice!