My first antenna, when there were TWO hd's, was a 10 inch piece of wire. I am 10 miles away. As more came on, including our two stations, I went to a medium grade VHF/UHF combo, and later to a rotor as two stations are 30 miles away in the other direction.
We have two VHF's, ch 11 and 13, and these V's pound so hard that at our studio and areas up to about 5 miles get too strong a signal and they have to be attenuated in the antenna lead. Luckilly, this attenuation only drops the U's about 1 to 2 numbers (in other words, does not kill the U's).
Right now I get all the locals, 7, 5 U's and 2 V's, not counting the sub-channels.