so ive been running a Diamond X50 on the roof for the past couple years and its been fine for local repeater work, hits everything within maybe 30-40 miles no problem. but lately ive been wanting to do more simplex and also work some of the weak signal stuff on 2m, like EME is probably a pipe dream right now but just SSB/CW tropo would be cool to try.

my question is whether its even worth putting up a yagi if im still mostly doing FM and repeaters 80% of the time. like i dont want to give up the omnidirectional coverage because im also running a linked repeater net on thursdays and need to hit a couple of machines in different directions. someone mentioned i could just add a second feedline and switch between antennas but that feels like it gets messy fast on the roof.

also open to hearing if anyone has run both and what the real world difference feels like on 2m ssb. numbers on paper are one thing but actually using it is another

yeah the antenna switching thing gets old pretty quick, i did it for about a year with an AR-270 and a 9 element M2 yagi before i just committed to the yagi full time and accepted id miss some repeater coverage in certain directions. honestly for weak signal 2m the difference is not subtle at all — the collinear just doesnt cut it when youre trying to pull someone out of the noise on SSB. gain is gain but more importantly the yagi actually rejects noise from other directions which matters a lot in my situation with all the city RF garbage around here.

if repeaters are still important to you the cleanest solution is probably a triplexer or at minimum a good coax switch you can reach from the shack. some guys run two separate rigs dedicated to each antenna too but thats its own rabbit hole. the X50 is a solid antenna btw, nothing wrong with it for what it was designed for

i had almost this exact setup dilema last spring. ended up just putting the yagi on a small rotator on a separate mast like 4 feet away from my existing vertical and running seperate feedlines down to a switch. costs a bit but having both available is really nice. the yagi i went with was a cheap 5 element homebrew i built off WA5VJB's cheap yagi designs, maybe 6-7 dBd on 2m, nothing crazy but way better than the collinear for any kind of weak signal work. tropo ducting season you really want that directional gain trust me