here's a purely personal point of view.
had a tagra BT104,3/4 wave sigma copy,built like a brick outhouse,on my chimney.
removed said antenna,replaced with an antron99,with a better VSWR,and dropped by 3 S points.to a lot of people.
but the tagra back up,and parity was regained.
oh yes,if I could find another,it would be on my chimney as we speak.
only antenna to come close was a lemm 3/4wave,with 4 1/4wave radials,and an inductive match arrangement on the base.
so there