Difficult HD signal reception

[kwatkins]

Hey folks, new to this, would love some help and ideas.

I live near on the north side of a steep ridge in the North Georgia mountains, about 50 miles North of Atlanta stations (my zip is 30533). Surrounded by lots of big trees, the ridge, which peaks about 300 yards from my house, is significantly higher than my house and prevents a "direct view" of Atlanta to the South. I have an old "fringe" multi band antenna (corner reflector UHF with conventional VHF elements, boom lenght is about 10'), and a mast -mounted pre-amp. The antenna is mast mounted on my roof (metal) about 6 feet above the peak. The feed is RG6 direct to a single Toshiba HDTV, about 40 foot run. I currently receive only one HD channel (8 physical) with a signal strenght peak of about 70 on my Toshiba HDTV. This is about 5 points above normal "lock in", but even this channel is sometimes lost with atmospherics, etc. I cannot evaluate the signal strenth of other VHF or UHF channels, because any signal recieved on my signal strengh meter (on the Toshiba) always registers "red 49" if there is any signal (except for the channel 8).

Analog UHF reception is terrible (only a couple of snowy channels), VHF analog is generally pretty good (channels 2 and 5 are quite good, but the physical HD transmission is UHF and I cannot get this). I have tried antenna aiming, some tree trimming and a second signal amplifier, all with no significant improvement.

I have pretty much concluded UHF HD is out because there is virtually no signal where I am located. There is one other (high) VHF HD channel in Atlanta (physical 10, virtual 11) which I would love to get, so that I at least get the two channels (8 and 11). My problem is that I do not know how "far away" I am from being able to receive the other VHF channel (11).

I am leaning towards the best high VHF band antenna I can get, new pre-amp, maybe raise the antenna a bit. Would love your ideas, and specific antenna recommendations!

Ken