so ive been doing a lot of hilltop activations lately, mostly 2m and 440, and ive been going back and forth on whether to bother hauling a yagi up or just stick with the slim jim or a decent collinear. right now im using a jpole i built from 450 ohm ladder line and its fine for what it is but i feel like im leaving range on the table especially for hitting repeaters that are a bit further out or doing some ssb simplex if the band opens up.

the thing is the yagi obviously gives you gain in one direction which is great if youre pointed the right way but on a hilltop you kind of want to work in multiple directions depending on whos around. so maybe a collinear makes more sense for that use case? ive looked at the arrow antenna yagi and also some of the homebrew tape measure designs and they seem practical enough to pack but i dunno. curious what others are actually running in this situation.

honestly depends on what youre doing up there. if its just hitting repeaters and chatting on fm then a good collinear is probably fine, something like a diamond x50 on a painters pole works really well and you dont have to think about aiming it. but if youre ever doing any weak signal ssb stuff or trying to make contacts over longer paths the yagi wins every time, the directivity is actually a feature not a bug once you figure out which way the interesting stations are.

ive run the arrow 2m/440 yagi for satellite work and it packs down pretty small, the elements just slide out. for hilltop id probably bring both and use the collinear for fm rag chewing then switch to the yagi if things get interesting. yeah its more stuff to carry but once youre up there youre glad you have options.

tape measure yagi is what i bring almost every time. weighs basically nothing and you can fold it up in the bag. yeah you gotta point it but thats half the fun honestly, you can really feel when youre on a good path. collinears are convenient but i feel like people overestimate how much gain they actually get in practice, a lot of those ratings are optimistic especially if youre not mounting them perfectly vertical.