so ive been running a diamond x50a on my roof for maybe three years now and its been fine for hitting the local 2m and 70cm repeaters but theres one repeater about 45 miles out that i can barely scratch into and only when conditions are decent. a buddy of mine keeps telling me to just throw up a yagi and be done with it but i dunno, im not trying to point an antenna every time i want to ragchew, that seems like a pain.

my current setup is the x50a on a j-pipe mount off the chimney, maybe 22 feet above ground, feeding into a kenwood TM-V71A with about 18 feet of LMR-400. the terrain between me and that far repeater is pretty flat with some tree cover but nothing ridiculous. i keep thinking maybe if i just got a taller collinear with more gain i could close the gap but then i also know vertical gain works differently than horizontal and i might just be chasing my tail here.

has anyone actually done a back to back comparison on something like this? like swapped between a high gain collinear and even a fixed-point yagi on the same path? curious if the difference is as dramatic as people say or if its one of those things that looks better on paper than it actually is in practice.

yeah the yagi vs collinear thing is one of those debates that never really ends cleanly. but for a fixed 45 mile path with a repeater you know the direction of, an HB9CV or even a cheap 5 element yagi pointed that way will absolutely smoke a collinear. we're talking potentially 6-8 dB difference over something like the x50a depending on what yagi you go with, and on a marginal path that is night and day.

the thing people dont think about is you dont have to rotate it if the repeater is in a fixed direction. just bolt it on, aim it once, done. i have a 7 element M2 on a fixed bracket aimed at a hilltop digi node about 38 miles out and i went from barely readable to full quieting on 5 watts. never touched it since i installed it. the collinear is still up for general use on a separate feedline.

your LMR-400 run is fine, thats not your problem. its just physics — a collinear spreads its pattern around 360 degrees and squishes it down toward the horizon, a yagi concentrates everything forward. for omnidirectional work keep the x50a, add a small yagi for that one repeater path and use a coax switch. honestly its less hassle than it sounds.

i had almost the exact same situation with a repeater over a ridge from me and went the fixed yagi route. used a cheap arrow antenna 2m 5 element, just strapped it to a piece of 1 inch conduit zip tied to my existing mast and aimed it roughly toward the repeater. took like 20 minutes. works way better than my old vertical ever did on that path.

honestly the x50a is a solid antenna i wouldnt get rid of it for general use. just run both if you can.