so ive been doing a lot of hilltop activations lately mostly on 2m and 70cm and i've been going back and forth on whether to bother lugging a yagi up there or just stick with my Diamond X50 which i've been using for years and honestly works pretty well from a decent elevation anyway.

the thing is i had a buddy who brought his 9 element yagi on a recent outing and yeah ok the difference was noticeable especially working some of the weaker stations but it was also kind of a pain to deal with in the wind and getting it pointed right takes time. i guess my question is whether people who do this regularly think the gain tradeoff is worth it for casual portable ops or am i just overthinking it and the collinear is fine for 90% of what ill be doing up there

i should mention im mostly doing FM simplex and the occasional linked repeater, not contesting or anything serious like that

for casual FM simplex from a hilltop the X50 is honestly hard to beat just because of the convenience factor. you're already getting a big advantage from the elevation itself and a collinear with its omnidirectional pattern means you dont have to think about aiming. i used to do the same thing with a 5el yagi and eventually just stopped bringing it because i was spending more time fussing with the mast than actually operating.

now if you start getting into weak signal SSB or you're trying to hit a specific distant repeater then yeah the yagi starts making more sense. but for what you're describing i think youre right that its overkill. the gain numbers look impressive on paper but a lot of that advantage disappears when you factor in the overhead of actually using the thing in field conditions. stick with the collinear and save the yagi for when you actually need the directionality not just the gain

i mean it kinda depends how far out your contacts usually are doesnt it. from a good hilltop with 50w and an X50 youre probably getting out 80-100 miles easy on 2m so unless youre regularly working guys at the edge of that range i wouldnt bother with the yagi for FM. different story if you were doing ssb or meteor scatter or something but sounds like youre not going there