Charles, first let me say that yesterday while at lunch at Bojangles in Louisburg, there was a guy with a radio on his belt and I could hear enough to know it was from dispatch - I later asked if he was part of Fire or EMS and he said yes. I did ask why they didn't switch to digital on the 3'rd, he just said the system was still being tested.
Ok, now your going to think the Old Fisherman fell off the boat and drank too much salt water for what I did to get decent reception - may or may not work where you live. The first thing to note is that I get 5 bars for signal strength no matter where I move the scanner, so that indication doesn't mean anything.
After going through the huge antenna and then 2 different yagis that at one time worked perfectly (more or less), something changed big time after weeks of hearing 'testing 1 2 3 4 5, 5 4 3 2 1'. Those antennas now sit in my shop not connected since they just don't work as good as the little duckie antenna.
I needed at least 2 'sweet spots' for listening, one in my house and one in my shop. What I did was take the 396XT, attach a small recorder to it and then let it sit in a spot for for an hour or so. Needless to say this is sure not efficient but after a few days I had a 'sweet spot' in the house and one in my shop - it's tough when there are no transmissions long enough to find where it works good. Finally got those spots but I needed one more next to where I sit at night and watch TV. I had a coax cable right there that I used to use for an outdoor 2/440 antenna so I ended up putting a duckie antenna on that one and let it hang over my wooden porch, maybe 2' above the ground. Took a while but I found a 'sweet spot' and now I can listen when relaxing at night. Have no idea if it would work at your location. If you do try it you may need to mount the duckie on some sort of metal to act as a ground plane - in my case I don't need it.
With any luck the system will be fixed so us on the fringes don't have to go through this - don't know what else to suggest you try unless you can borrow one of those GRE-500 scanners with the rssi meter. That would quickly tell if a good signal spot may be a 'sweet spot' and save a lot of testing. It may be worth just waiting for Harris to fix their problems, but it has been a while since they started this digital stuff back in September. Would be great if someone knew what Harris is planning next.