so ive been going back and forth on this for a while now and figured id just ask. i'm about 23 miles from the main repeater i use on 2m and its mostly flat terrain between me and it, maybe one small ridge but nothing serious. right now i have a diamond x50a up about 25 feet on a pushup mast and it works fine most of the time but when conditions are even slightly off i start getting into the repeater with audio that apparently sounds pretty rough on the other end.

a buddy of mine swears i should just put up a yagi pointed at the repeater and be done with it. like a 5 or 6 element job on a fixed mount. makes sense to me on paper but then i lose the ability to hit any other repeaters or work simplex in different directions which i do occasionally for things like ARES nets. honestly i dont know if the gain from a yagi would even make that much difference vs just getting the collinear up higher. im at about the limit of what my current mast can do so getting a taller tower isnt really in the cards right now. has anyone actually swapped from a omni to a directional for this kind of situation and was it worth it

the honest answer is it depends on what you value more. 23 miles on 2m with flat terrain you really shouldnt be struggling that much with an x50a at 25 feet unless something else is going on. have you checked the coax? i cant tell you how many times ive chased an antenna problem that turned out to be water in the pl-259 or a connector thats just oxidized enough to cause issues under certain conditions. the x50a is a solid antenna and should have enough gain to work that path pretty comfortably.

that said if you do want to try a yagi, a 6 element m2 or even a homebrew tape measure yagi isnt gonna break the bank. you could always put it on a cheap TV rotator if you want to keep some flexibility in direction. not perfect but workable for a fixed home station. i ran a 5 element cushcraft on a channel master rotator for years before i finally went back to a collinear when i moved and the compromise was acceptable.

yeah what he said about the coax first. but also — what feedline are you using and how long is the run? 25 feet of mast sounds fine but if youre running like 75 feet of RG-8X down to the radio thats eating into your link budget more than people usually think. on 2m the losses add up fast especially if its old coax thats been sitting in the sun for a few years. LMR-400 or equivalent makes a real difference on a run that long. might be worth trying that before you start swapping antennas around.