Paso Robles CA receiving Fresno, Bakersfield Stations

I am curious a Technician told me all digital TV stations are required by the FCC to be transmitting strictly UHF now. I have noticed many members talking about VHF Digi stations. I though VHF was still in use seeing channel numbers below 13 on my digi TV receiver causing me to think I needed multiband giant antenna. I also use two way radio gear that caused occasional interference with my TV reception. Once I figured out the channel numbers displayed weren't more than station IDs and not actually the frequency and that the signals are UHF I decided to go with stacked UHF only antennas. Decided to cut the UHF portions off my old largest multiband winegard I had kept for parts and the current one I had on my 40ft tower, just below my two way radio antenna. I stacked the two antennas vertically
as can be seen on my avatar with two feet of space between them with equal lengths of coax running to a two way splitter into my mast mounted radio shack amplifier. Ran the coax down and under the eave of the house where I mounted the amplifier power box. The house had previously had major every room dish TV setup with plenty of incoming cables/splitters all under the eave where I mounted the power box with a male/male connector. My reception was great for a year of both Fresno and Bakersfield stations, sometimes not needing to move the rotor at all. Also picked up KSBY in San Luis Obispo. Never could get Santa Maria stations which surprised me as my CB radio worked to Santa Maria regularly. with the past 6 months I have lost reception of the Fresno stations and late night Bakersfield reception has been dropping out. Not sure if they lower their power at night or why this is happening. I saw pictures of a stacked set of UHF antennas spaced apart horizontally. Wondering if changing mine to that configuration would improve my reception. Has anyone here tried both ways? I plan on tilting the tower down this weekend weather permitting as my radio antenna needs maintenance. Wind is a major opponent on this highest for many miles hilltop!

Oh, the good news was when I cut away the long no longer needed portions of the antennas my two way radio transmitter no longer interferes with the TV reception. If anyone out there is plagued with a nearby CBer or Ham causing interference and you have an old monster multiband antenna try the UHF only antenna as this cured the problem for me with my antennas even being as close as they are.

Any advice on stacked horizontal versus vertical will be greatly appreciated

thank you for correcting the info... now that I've checked out tvfool I see that there are a few vhf in my area however appear to be low power analog so I'm going to stick with my UHF stacked yagis. stacking vertical would affect critical pinpointing with horizontal lessening the need for exact antenna direction positioning?

I am able to pick up stations 119 miles away however I do get occasional drop outs and pixel blocking, mostly late night. I have a radio shack 20 db signal amplifier which I need due to numerous splitters to four digital receivers. I don't have the distribution type amplifier I run it into an abandoned dish TV distribution block. I now notice the Fresno stations I lost are channel 7 so I now know why I lost them. Guess the guys at the morro bay radio shack don't know everything. I talked to the Chief Engineer at KSBY asking about their website which read an VHF HDTV antenna was needed to receive their signal who informed me that they were now transmitting on UHF channel 15. He had the info on the website changed to UHF a few days later. I will try adding VHF-H antenna to see if I can get back my favorite Fresno Stations. I'm thinking maybe the old multiband monster antenna boom length was too close to a 10 meter 1/4 wave radio antenna possibly causing my interference issue.

I had for a short time (two weeks) one of the chinese plastic dish looking antennas off of eBay with built in rotor and amplifier claiming 100 mile reception. It did pull in all my stations for a bit but was a pain having to go outside while having my wife turn it to see where the heck it was pointed. The first 75 mph wind gusts blew it apart so that was the end of that. No interference issues with that antenna testing it with a kw from my ham station on ten meters with the radio antenna 30 feet away.

I get too long winded haha