so ive been doing portable VHF ops from a hilltop maybe 6-7 times a year, usually 2m and sometimes 70cm, and ive always just packed my 5/8 wave whip on a painters pole and called it a day. works fine for local stuff but i keep wondering if a small yagi would open things up more for tropo or just getting into repeaters further out.

the thing is, setting up a yagi solo on a hilltop is kind of a pain, you gotta orient it, deal with the mast, polarization etc. with the collinear i just stick it up and its omnidirectional which honestly suits the kind of casual operating i do up there. but im leaving gain on the table obviously.

anyone actually run both and have a real opinion on which made more of a practical difference? im not doing EME or anything serious, just trying to have fun and maybe work some stations a bit further out. ive been looking at the 5el M2 yagi for 2m as something portable but not sure its worth schlepping up a hill compared to just a decent collinear like a diamond X50 or similar

honestly for tropo the yagi wins every time but you already knew that. the question is how much effort you want to put in. i used to haul a 6el yagi up hills and yeah it worked great but i spent half the time rotating it by hand and trying to figure out where the signal was coming from. these days i bring a 5el and a cheap az-el mount made from plumbing pipe and its actually not that bad once youre set up.

the X50 is a solid antenna dont get me wrong but its not in the same league for working DX even on a good tropo day. collinears are great for if you just want to be loud in all directions at once, good for sporadic-E maybe, but pointed gain is pointed gain. if you care about working stations more than 150 miles out on 2m you probably want the yagi.

one thing i will say — horizontal polarization matters if youre trying to work SSB weak signal guys. most of the serious 2m ops are horizontal and if youre running vertical you lose 20db crossing polarizations which is worse than not having the gain in the first place

I went through this same debate last summer. Ended up just bringing both on a few trips to compare and for me the yagi was clearly better once I was pointed at something, but I missed the omni aspect more than I expected. Like there were a couple times I heard someone call on the repeater behind me and I had no idea until I rotated around.

the M2 5el is a nice antenna, pretty light and breaks down small enough, I dont think its as painful to transport as you'd expect. mines been up hills a few times now with no complaints.