That black thing is a duct. Not sure if it has foil inside or not. Unfortunately I am limited where I can put the antenna as the attic has very few floorboards so I have to balance on the joists. I tried to get as close to th wall as possible and low enough to take advantage of the wider portion of the wall.
I am getting about 35 channels now (all the networks plus some others). They are all coming in at about 70 to 85% signal level with the amp and about 50 - 65% signal quality.
I ordered
this pre-amp because it is supposed to have a very low noise floor. It has a 18db gain. Hopefully this will be enough to boost the signal to acceptable levels.
Only the ABC affiliate is coming in poorly. The quality is at about 45% to 50% and it's very spotty reception.
Here is the
signal report.