I must admit, I haven't been following this thread, however I'd like to put 
my two cents in here as well. My own experience is that antenna height is 
more critical for frequencies above 50 megahertz than for say the HF bands. 
I can remember using a Mini-Quad at about ten feet, actually going out in to 
the backyard in order to turn the antenna which was mounted on the corner of 
a deck and working Europe on 15 and 20 meters. Of course when I was using an 
ATB34 at about 45 feet, of course the signal strength was much better and I 
was able to hear and work many more countries. On frequencies above 50 MHZ 
the use of directional antennas sometimes becomes obnoxious when working 
distant repeaters because of the possibility of bringing up three or four at 
the same time. Sometimes it can't be helped. I remember over Thanksgiving 
one year, might have been 1984 or 1987 when two meters was open from the 
midwest all the way to Alaska. I worked a mountain-top repeater in West 
Virginia with an HT. Believe me, that was phenomenal. Generally though, if 
you're working distant stations above 50 MHZ you need a directional antenna, 
because even if you are say on an HT, it is amazing what a building between 
you and the repeater can do to a signal, and this becomes much more evident 
on 440 megahertz than 2 meters and if you['re working in the 1,200 megahertz 
band you just about need to be pointing right at each other in order to hear 
the other station, that's what I've been told any way. By the way, if you're 
using a Ringo Ranger at about 20 or 25 feet, that's plenty high enough. You 
don't want to be interfering with stations 50-60 miles away when it's more 
than 40 feet off the ground, or just reduce your output power, because if 
your antenna is 40 or more feet up you won't need more than probably five 
watts to be heard locally.

Fred Olver N9BSO