I've got and old Diamond discone I scored for free and I use it on my roof top for 2 meters. It works just fine, but if I was buying a new antenna, I'd go with something like a Diamond X50 or similar. I'm not sure what the radiation pattern is like on the discones. It works well enough for me, but I'm in a fairly small valley, so I don't need much range. You being in Iowa would make me think something with a more known radiation pattern might be a better choice.