so ive been running a diamond x50 on the roof for about two years now and it works fine for the local 2m/70cm repeaters, hits everything within maybe 30-40 miles no problem. but theres this one repeater about 55 miles out that i can only barely hit when conditions are good and i got to thinking maybe a yagi would solve it.

the thing is that repeater isnt even one i use that often, its just bugging me that i cant reliably hit it. my shack is on the second floor so running new coax down to a dedicated yagi mount on the chimney is gonna be a whole afternoon project minimum. and then i lose the omnidirectional coverage i have now unless i set up both antennas which means a duplexer or a second feedline and it just starts to snowball.

anyone gone down this road and regret it or was it worth it for you? also wondering if a longer collinear would even get me there or if im just not going to beat the physics on a 55 mile path without going directional

honest answer — a yagi is going to walk all over a collinear for that kind of path, theres really no comparison once you get past maybe 40 miles on 2m with typical terrain. a decent 5 or 6 element yagi like an M2 or even a homebrewed one from the ARRL handbook is going to give you 10+ dBd over that x50 which is already a solid antenna. the collinear route tops out eventually and you start hitting diminishing returns fast.

the coax run thing is a real consideration though. if youre running more than about 50 feet of RG8X on 2m you want to think hard about that. LMR400 or similar low loss line makes a noticeable difference especially if the run is long. i did basically the same setup two years ago, ran LMR400 up to a yagi pointed at a distant linked repeater and the difference was immediately obvious. kept the x50 on a separate port for local stuff. duplexer setup isnt that bad honestly, just make sure you get one rated for both bands if you want to use both at once.

55 miles on 2m FM is doable but yeah its going to depend on what's in between you and the repeater site. do you know if theres any elevation advantage at the repeater end? that matters a lot more than people think. i spent like three weekends messing with antenna height and coax trying to hit a site that turned out to just have a ridgeline in the way and no amount of gain was going to fix it lol

not trying to discourage you just saying maybe confirm the path isnt blocked before going all in on new hardware