Today (with the day off from work for the holiday) I managed to get out with my HT and find where I can and can't reach the Fancy Gap repeater that networks with my club's weekly net (KF4OVA on 442.425, + offset, PL 107.2). I spent about an hour driving around little back roads, turning around for end of road and avoiding private roads, looking for locations where I could key the repeater from my HT and where Google Maps terrain view seemed to indicate I might be able to also "see" my home. The long term goal is seeking a location where I might be able to put up a passive repeater and reach "around" Sauratown Mountain to that repeater (the ones actually on Sauratown Mountain don't have the required connectivity).
Looks like there are two real possibilities. First, the eastern end of Sauratown Mountain itself, and the saddle between it and Hanging Rock. I had clean reception of the repeater's carrier where NC 66 passes through the saddle, and a good bit up the Sauratown Mountain side of on Taylor Road (go too far up on Sauratown Mountain Road and the interference from the 10-12 radio towers on the high part of the ridge gets too deep -- and most of the mountain is roadless, posted land). The other possibility, less likely to be practical, is a ridge actually inside Hanging Rock State Park.
I did see what I took to be a ham antenna on a house near the intersection of Hwy 66 and Taylor Road -- it was a vertical with four ground plane rods, seemed to be sized for 10m or 6m (though possibly a CB base station antenna -- don't know how popular CB still is in north central North Carolina). That location has good access to the Fancy Gap repeater, and I'm pretty sure I can reach it from home (unfortunately, I don't have the gear to set up a temporary echo unit at home to check that side of this access puzzle). I wonder if there's a way to turn an address into a call sign, the way QRZ or the FCC database will turn a call sign into an address?