so ive been going back and forth on this for a while and figured id just ask. my house is kind of in a shallow valley, not terrible but there's a ridge to the northeast that blocks a couple repeaters i actually want to use. right now im running a diamond x50 on a j-pole mount about 15 feet up on the side of the house and i can hit the closer repeaters fine but the ones on the ridge are marginal at best, scratchy audio and sometimes just drop out mid-conversation.

someone suggested i just put up a small yagi pointed at the ridge but i dont really want to give up the omni coverage if i can help it, i like being able to hit repeaters in multiple directions without thinking about it. is there any kind of compromise here or am i just going to have to pick one and live with it. i was also wondering if getting the collinear higher would even help in this situation or if the ridge is just physically blocking the path regardless of height

the ridge is probably your real problem more than the antenna choice honestly. a higher collinear might help a bit if you can get it above the terrain obstruction but if the ridge is actually in the first fresnel zone youre just going to keep fighting it. a yagi with even modest gain pointed that direction would likely make a bigger difference than going from a x50 to something taller. i know you dont want to give up the omni but you could always put both up and use a switch, lot of guys do that. keep the collinear for general use and flip to the yagi when you want those specific repeaters. a 5 element for 2m is not that big a deal to mount and aim.

yeah this is kind of a classic terrain problem and theres no magic antenna solution that gets around actual geography. what i would do before buying anything is use something like heywhatsthat or radio mobile and actually look at the path profile to those repeaters. sometimes what looks like a bad location isnt quite as bad as it seems if you can squeeze up another 10 feet, other times you really are just in a hole and no collinear is going to fix it. ive seen guys put up 5/8 wave stacks thinking more gain solves everything and it doesnt change a thing because the problem was never antenna gain to begin with. the dual antenna idea the other guy mentioned is solid though, ive done exactly that at a previous qth and it works fine with a cheap coax switch.