so ive been running a Diamond NR770H on my truck for about two years now and its been fine for local repeaters and the occasional simplex chat but i keep hearing guys on the club net with noticeably stronger signals and a lot of them are running some kind of roof mounted setup or even a small yagi on a mag mount which i didnt even know was really a thing people did mobile.

my commute takes me past a hilltop about 12 miles from the city and ive had this half baked idea of throwing up a small 2m yagi on a tripod up there for like weak signal work or even just better simplex coverage into town. wondering if anyone has actually done something like a 5 or 6 element yagi portable or if thats more trouble than its worth when you could just run a collinear with more height. my current rig is a TM-V71A if that matters.

not even sure what my actual question is here, i guess im just curious what people have found works best for mobile vhf and whether a yagi for hilltop portable ops is something worth building or buying

the NR770H is a decent antenna, nothing wrong with it, but yeah vertical collinears are all kind of fighting the same battle — you get gain on the horizon but its omnidirectional so youre spreading it around. if the guys sounding stronger on the net are running something like a 5/8 over 5/8 or a longer collinear up higher thats probably where the difference is coming from, not some magic antenna just good height and maybe a bit more gain.

for the hilltop idea though a yagi makes a lot of sense if you know roughly where the people you want to work are. even a 3 element beam on 2m will give you maybe 7 or 8 dBd and you can feel that difference instantly compared to a whip. i built a cheap PVC tape measure yagi years ago off the ARRL design and honestly for portable ops its hard to beat, weighs almost nothing and you can tune it pretty easily. if youre doing SSB weak signal stuff thats a whole different conversation but for FM simplex into town it would absolutely get the job done from a hilltop.

yeah the tape measure yagi thing is legit, i made one for fox hunting and used it on a hilltop once for kicks and the difference versus my mag mount whip was pretty obvious. wasnt even pointed perfectly and was still pulling in a guy like 40 miles out that i couldnt hear at all from the car in the valley.

one thing i will say about mobile setups — roof center mount makes a bigger differnce than people expect, like more than switching antenna brands in my experience. if your NR770H is on a mag mount off to one side you might be losing a db or two just from the ground plane being uneven. not saying thats your problem but worth thinking about before buying new gear