so ive been going back and forth on this for a while now and figured id just ask here since theres some experienced VHF guys on this board. i have a semi-permanent hilltop setup i use for 2m SSB work, nothing fancy, just a mast bolted to a wooden frame on a ridge at about 1400m elevation. right now im running a 5/8 wave collinear which does okay for local stuff but when i try to work anything more than maybe 150-200km out it gets pretty rough even with decent tropo conditions.

someone told me to just throw a yagi up there instead and call it a day but im not sure a fixed-pointing yagi makes sense unless im going to mount it on a rotator, which is more hassle than i want at this site since i can only get up there maybe once a month to maintain anything. the collinear at least covers all directions which has its uses.

i guess what im asking is whether anyone has actually compared these two in a hilltop scenario or has some real world experience rather than just the theoretical gain numbers. the collinear is rated at around 5.5 dBi and whatever yagi id replace it with would probably be 7 or 8 element, so maybe 10-11 dBd depending on the design. i know the math but im wondering if the omnidirectional coverage loss is actually as painful as it sounds in practice.

yeah the math doesnt really capture it. ive run both from hilltop sites and honestly the yagi wins every time for weak signal SSB work, but only if you can point it. the thing people forget is that most of your interesting contacts on 2m tropo are going to come from a fairly predictable direction based on your geography — if youre on a ridge line you probably already know which path opens up most often. a fixed yagi pointed at your best path isnt as limiting as it sounds.

that said i had a 6el on a fixed mount for about two years and i definitely missed a few openings that were happening off the back or sides. it's a tradeoff. if you can do even a simple manual rotator setup with a bearing indicator it changes everything. doesnt have to be fancy, ive seen guys use a tv rotator with a potentiometer and a cheap voltmeter as the indicator and it works fine for VHF where you dont need super precise pointing.

the collinear is fine for FM and general use but for SSB weak signal work you really want that forward gain. 5.5 dBi vs even a modest yagi is a noticeable difference on marginal paths.

I run a 9el DK7ZB on a rotator at my hilltop site and the difference compared to the omni I had before was pretty dramatic honestly. First time I actually worked a station in France on 2m SSB during a tropo opening — before that I was getting nothing beyond about 180km. The rotator question really is the key one though, you don't want a fixed yagi unless you've got a very specific path in mind.

What coax are you running up there by the way? I ask because I spent months chasing antenna gain and it turned out my feedline loss was eating most of it. Had like 15m of RG58 and switching to Ecoflex 10 made more difference than changing antennas did.