One more trick is to add a rat-tail to your HT.
See my old post here where I compare Rx with my FT-60 with the standard 7" antenna, a Nagoya 15.5" antenna and the roll-up J-pole with and without the rat-tail. The 3+ S-unit difference the rat-tail makes is yuge since every S-unit is a 4:1 change.
ANTENNA___NO RAT__WITH RAT
Yaesu_______S5_____S8 to S9+20
Nagoya______S5_____S8 to S9+20
J-pole_______S8
It makes sense that connecting a 19.5" piece of wire to the HT's metal body makes a BIG difference on 2m. Normally you have a crappy dipole arrangement with the rubber-duck being electrically 1/4 wave long and the body of the HT trying to act like the other half of a dipole. Putting a piece of wire that is 1/4wave long on the body turns it into a real symmetrical dipole. On my FT-60 I attach the wire to one of the belt clip screws.