Well yesterday I decided to do a "process of elimination" on my antenna....I disconnected the coax and hooked it up to my mag mount antenna stuck on a second story a/c window shaker, and everything's good....it was the used J-pole just like I thought.
Gonna order up a Tram 1481 antenna to put atop of the mast and get rid of the useless directional DTV antenna. Instead, I'm gonna get one of these for DTV:
https://www.amazon.com/Lava-HD-8000-.../dp/B00EPP1CNU
The only thing I'm not sure of is if I mount it just below the ground plane of the 2m antenna, if there's a such thing as TVI with a DTV signal.....