so ive been running a diamond x50 on the roof for about two years now and its been fine for hitting the local 2m and 70cm repeaters, no real complaints. but lately ive been reading more about yagis and how much better the gain is and im starting to wonder if im leaving performance on the table.

the thing is my main use is just rag chewing on the local linked repeater network, occasionally some simplex when conditions are good. not doing any serious dx or contest stuff on vhf. the repeater is maybe 18 miles away with a decent shot, no real terrain in the way. my x50 hits it just fine, full quieting most of the time.

so my question is really whether theres any practical reason to swap to something like a 5 or 7 element yagi pointed at the repeater. obviously id lose the omnidirectional coverage which is kind of nice to have. or is there some middle ground im not thinking of. someone mentioned a collinear with more elements would get me a few more db without giving up the omni pattern but i dont know if thats actually worth the money and the climb back up on the roof.

running about 50w from an ic-2300h if that matters

honestly for repeater work youre probably overthinking it. the x50 is a solid antenna and if youre already full quieting at 18 miles with 50w theres not a lot a yagi is going to do for you in practical terms. more gain into a single direction sounds great on paper but when you want to call a buddy who lives in the other direction youll be turning the antenna or just not hearing them as well, which gets old fast.

the collinear more elements idea isnt bad, something like a diamond x300 or even an x510 would give you a little more gain while keeping the omni, but were talking maybe 2-3db real world difference from what you have. whether thats worth another roof climb and $100-150 is really up to you. if your current setup is working i'd probably just leave it alone and spend the money on something else. now if you were trying to work weak signal ssb on 2m that would be a totally different conversation and yeah a yagi starts making a lot of sense.

yagis are awesome but yeah the directionality thing bites you if all youre doing is local repeater stuff. i put up a 9 element m2 on a rotator a while back for 2m weak signal work and it's great for that but it would be completely overkill and kind of annoying for everyday repeater use. had to remember to rotate it toward the machine which sounds minor but gets old. left the x50 up on the other side of the chimney for exactly that reason, just use whichever depending on what im doing.