so ive been running a diamond X50A on the roof for a couple years now and its fine for hitting the local repeaters but theres this one guy about 85 miles out i can barely reach and we've been trying to have a regular sked on 2m simplex. sometimes it works, sometimes its totally in the noise. i started wondering if throwing up a small yagi pointed his direction would actually make a noticeable difference or if im just chasing my tail here.

my current situation is the X50A up about 25 feet on a chimney mount, feed line is about 40 feet of LMR400 into an IC-9700. the other station is running roughly similar setup i think, maybe a little lower. terrain between us is pretty flat with some light tree cover, no major hills or anything obvious blocking the path.

i was looking at a 5 or 6 element yagi, something like an M2 or maybe just build something from the ARRL handbook. the gain difference between the collinear and a decent yagi that direction is what, maybe 8-10 dBd? that feels like it should matter a lot over 85 miles but i also know 2m can be weird and sometimes a higher angle radiation gets you farther because of ducting or scatter or whatever. not sure if narrowing down to one direction would actually help or hurt depending on conditions.

anyone swapped from an omni to a directional for this kind of thing and actually noticed a real improvement in marginal paths?

short answer yes it will help. 8-10 dBd on a marginal path is not nothing, thats like running a completely different league of power without touching the radio. i did basically the same thing a few years back, had a 5/8 wave omni and was struggling to work a buddy about 70 miles out on 2m. put up a 7 element yagi from M2 pointed that direction and the path went from barely copyable to mostly solid, still fades sometimes but we can actually have a real QSO now.

the one thing i will say is your feed line loss at 2m over 40 feet of LMR400 is pretty minimal so thats not your problem. its just physics at that distance on an omni. the yagi wont fix ducting weirdness but on a flat path with no major obstructions it should tighten things up noticeably. id try a homebrew first honestly, a 6 element 2m yagi is a weekend project and there are plenty of proven designs out there. save the M2 money for later if you decide you want to get serious about weak signal work.

yeah 85 miles on 2m simplex with omnis is already kind of impressive depending on your heights so the path is probably workable. a yagi pointed that way should help on the marginal days for sure. only thing id think about is whether you want to deal with rotating it or just fix mount it. if hes the only reason you want the yagi just bolt it in his direction and call it done, way simpler than messing with a rotator for a single sked partner. also worth asking what height he's at, sometimes getting the other end up even 5 or 10 more feet does more than anything you do on your end.