Rick,
I did a path study from your place to the Atlas repeater, see the attachment.
For you to have the sought-after “line-of-sight” path your antenna needs to be 50’ above ground. This does not take into account getting above the trees that surround your place, although trees will not attenuate VHF too much and will have some greater amount of attenuation at UHF.
You indicate you can’t communicate through the Atlas club repeaters, but I don’t know what you are using to try.
We all make choices and I have found that if I want to live where I live, I can’t use a talkie at my house to talk to the club repeater – I must use a base station with an elevated antenna.
If you want to talk to the local repeaters, you need to get your antennas up in the air.
As an alternative I see there is a 300’ tower only 0.7 miles from you. Put a repeater on that tower and link it to the Atlas site and you will have talkie coverage!
Let me know if I can help.
73,
Charles WA5VHU
