In that part of the world, the valleys are narrow, the hill sides are steep. Relatively flat land is expensive if even available. If you did secure and acre or two, would there be any signal "escape" if 500 to 1500 feet hills surrounded the tower less than a mile away? The valleys' bottom land tends to flood too. Appalachia is difficult country for anything requiring a lot of flat land. It's ridiculously expensive to build roads too. WCHS has towers in top of a ridge. There are some flat areas but they are either houses and towns or farm land. There are unreclaimed strip mines that tend to be flat but the various government agencies want the land back to the original profile. At one time in the 1980's there was a movement to let folks buy the land and farm it but that never gained enough traction to make a difference. What would be the ground conductivity on a field of coal mine waste? I am pretty sure it's not as good as parts of Iowa, Kansas, Texas, etc.