so ive been running a diamond x50 on my roof for a couple years now and its fine for hitting the local 2m and 70cm repeaters but ive been wanting to get into some weak signal work on 2m, mostly meteor scatter and maybe some EME down the road if i ever get my act together. the question is whether i should just add a dedicated yagi for that or try to find some compromise antenna that does both reasonably well.

my roof situation is a bit complicated, i rent so i cant really go nuts with a big mast and rotator, though my landlord is pretty chill about stuff thats not too obvious. i was looking at a 5 element yagi for 2m, something like the M2 2M5WL or even just building a simple tape measure yagi to get started. the gain difference over the collinear is obviously significant for weak signal but the collinear stays omnidirectional which matters when im just doing ragchews on the repeater.

has anyone run both simultaneously or just switched back and forth depending on what theyre doing? i have an old coax switch somewhere so splitting them isnt a big deal electrically i guess. mainly wondering if the improvement on meteor scatter is actually noticeable with a modest yagi like a 5 el versus just using the collinear pointed skyward

yeah the difference between a collinear and even a modest yagi on meteor scatter is pretty dramatic, its not subtle at all. i used to try MS on 2m with a vertical and it was frustrating, switched to an 8 element yagi and suddenly i was actually completing contacts instead of just seeing partial pings. the thing is for MS youre not just fighting path loss youre fighting timing and every db helps you decode more bursts.

the tape measure yagi is worth building just to see what youre dealing with, its a weekend project and the performance is surprisingly good for what it costs. if you get the bug youll want to upgrade eventually but its a solid starting point. for your landlord situation a small yagi isnt that visually different from a regular TV antenna so you might get away with more than you think. i actually run a coax relay so i can switch between my vertical for FM and the yagi for weak signal from the radio room, works great.

M2 stuff is well built but honestly for starting out i wouldnt spend that much until you know you like the mode. the tape measure yagi or even one of the cheap arrow antennas would let you figure out if MS is your thing first. also dont forget you need to sort out your audio interface and WSJT-X settings before the antenna even matters that much, ive seen guys with great antennas get nowhere because their clock sync was off or they had the wrong decode settings for FSK441 vs MSK144