so ive been doing a lot of portable ops lately, mostly 2m and 70cm, usually from hilltops or ridgelines when the weather cooperates. i currently run a Diamond X50 collinear on a tripod and its fine but i keep wondering if im leaving a lot on the table compared to guys who pack up a yagi.

the thing is i mostly do SSB weak signal stuff on 2m, not just FM simplex, so gain in a specific direction would actually matter. a collinear is great when you dont know where the other station is but once youre doing a sked or tropo stuff i feel like a yagi would just blow it out of the water. am i thinking about this right or is there some reason people stick with omnis even for weak signal work?

ive looked at the M2 2MCP8A and a couple of the Arrow dual banders but not sure what the tradeoffs are beyond obvious stuff like portability. anyone actually compared these in the field?

yeah you're basically right. for serious weak signal SSB work on 2m a yagi is going to walk all over a vertical collinear, no contest. the X50 is a solid antenna but its omni pattern is exactly what you dont want when youre trying to pull a station out of the noise 400 miles away during a tropo opening. youre giving up easily 10+ dB of gain compared to even a modest 5 or 6 element beam.

i ran an Arrow 2m/70cm yagi for portable for a couple years and it worked great. it's obviously a satellite antenna by design so the pattern isnt optimized for terrestrial work the same way a long boom yagi would be, but for field use and packability its a reasonable compromise. if you have room to haul a longer boom then something like the M2 or even a homebrew 5el would serve you much better for tropo and EME prep work. depends what your actual use case is - sked work with known stations or just whatever opens up.

i use a 9 element homemade yagi i built off WA5VJB cheap yagi plans, thing cost me maybe $15 in parts and it absolutely rips on 2m ssb. not the lightest option but it breaks down and fits in a bag. honestly i'd just build one before spending M2 money for portable use where it might get knocked around anyway.