so ive been doing these hilltop activations with my HT and a slim jim rolled up in my pack and its been fine for local repeaters but i want to start trying some simplex contacts at distance, maybe some weak signal stuff eventually. been looking at building or buying a small yagi for 2m and wondering if anyone has actually done a comparison between just running a good collinear like an arrow or a teletilt vs a 5 or 6 element yagi pointed at the horizon.

the thing is i dont always know where the other stations are going to be so a directional antenna feels like it could be a pain to manage on a summit, especially if its windy. but the gain difference is obviously real. im using a kenwood th-d74 which is a decent radio but its still just an HT at the end of the day. wondering if the yagi gain would compensate for the lower power or if i should just focus on getting a better base rig before worrying about antenna upgrades for portable ops

the yagi is absolutely worth it for simplex distance work, especially on 2m. ive used a 5el homebrew tape measure yagi on summits and the difference vs a vertical is not subtle — you can hear stations that just arent there at all on the collinear. the trick i use is set up the yagi on a lightweight painters pole and just slowly rotate it by hand when im scanning. you get used to where the likely paths are pretty quick especially if you check a topo map before the activation.

the slim jim or a roll up jpole is fine for repeater work but for simplex dx youre fighting physics with a vertical. for what its worth a 6el on 2m is maybe 10dBd and that blows any collinear out of the water for a point to point path. wind is a real issue though, i had a lightweight yagi act like a sail at about 30 mph and it was not a fun time trying to hold it steady

yeah what he said about the yagi. also if youre eventually thinking weak signal like SSB or digital on 2m a vertical collinear is basically useless since most of that ops on horizontal polarization anyway so you'd need the yagi regardless. might as well get comfortable with it now. the arrow antennas are nice and packable but honestly a tape measure yagi you build yourself is like 15 bucks and folds flat, theres a classic ARRL design thats been around forever and it just works.