Because of homeowner restrictions in our subdivision, all of my antennas are located in the attic above the garage. My primary 2 meter antenna is a pair of M2 Antenna Systems stacked loop antennas. The loops are horizontally-polarized, omnidirectional, and exhibit approximately 6 dB of gain with respect to a dipole. The loops are fed with LMR-400 coaxial cable. I have not installed a mast-mounted pre-amp on this antenna system because I have determined that the improvement in noise figure would be minimal with the relatively short run of coaxial cable and the resulting minimal loss at 144 MHz.