You must be thinking of someone else. I don't own an a99 antenna and never have, although I have worked with my share of them over the years. I actually had a friends on my house at one point... Long story... I may have called it mine as it was on my house and I used it, but it technically wasn't. He didn't want it back, and I gave it away when I moved in to my current house and put up a Maco v5000.
I have analysed the a99 antenna pretty extensively using modeling including many setups that as far as I know don't actually exist anywhere in reality just to get an idea of what would happen. As far as gain is concerned, and once CMC's were dealt with, the differences with having radials in any configuration and no radials was so close you would never even notice the difference. Within this range of minor differences, a set of full length 1/4 wavelength horizontal radials actually had the least amount of gain, while a set of shortened angled radials that match the radial kit had the best gain.
I did mention that the main noticeable effect of using said radials was their ability to control common mode currents.
When it comes to the Imax, I also played with it in said modeling, and got a very different result. I didn't talk about it much on this forum though (or any forum for that matter). Both the models with radial same radial kit that you can buy with the shortened angled radials, and the model with full length angled radials, performed noticeably worse than anything with no radials or horizontal radials. The gain was there, but it was in a higher lobe. In this case, the downward angled radials added enough out of phase vertical polarization to affect the pattern of the antenna. The only Imax models that I have that performed worse than that is one with a 1/4 wavelength wire running straight down to simulate the suggestions of many people who say to put a choke that far away from the antenna for various reasons. A choke that far away from the antenna, any antenna, defeats the purpose of having a choke in the first place...
And yet there are many people who add a radial kit to existing a99 antennas and see no noticeable difference, just like modeling predicts. As a matter of fact, this is the majority of reports that I am aware of. I agree that the a99's are cheaply made and could easily be made better, and I will always recommend another antenna, and by another antenna I mean any other antenna over an a99 or Imax antenna. That being said, if that is what someone has, I'll still work with it... I've had success with a ferrite based choke in combination with a two foot solid fiberglass rod as mast isolation for controlling CMC's.
Fair enough. In that regard, if there is a tall tree that he can get a wire up pretty far to hoist a wire antenna, a T2LT antenna will also work well, and be a cheap alternative. It could also be mounted horizontally if that is what is desired.
The DB