Trying to pull it out of a 55 year old house would be sheetrock repair which at this point I would rather just take the switch out and put a longer antenna on. Took 5 min to take apart, just couldnt figure out how to pull the PCB's out without breaking them. Which I am a bull in a china shop for most of this kind of work 
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Fair enough.
Going to finish off my current inventory of parts then hold off on the mods for a while. If anyone else wants help converting their hub let me know.
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Lewis, thank you for this incredible service you have provided the community!
If you ever find yourself around New Orleans, let me know. You can count on a solid evening of fine dining and drinking on me!
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My boss lives over there also. I'll have to make a trip sometime.
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So I just saw this thread today and now i'm wondering/hoping all these antennae and soldering efforts are no longer needed.... I know helpful, but still needed?
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That is for you to decide. But my understanding is:
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The software update allows the HE to better handle the RF congestion going on in your ZWave mesh. This is particularly helpful in a busy ZWave network and/or when devices require "hops" to get to/from the HE. This update is great.
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The external antenna will provide greater signal strength. Greater signal strength will allow more devices to connect directly to the HE. More devices directly connected to the HE will dramatically reduce the number of packets being sent on the ZWave mesh. This mod. is really great.
Both of these will improve your ZWave mesh. Certainly do the firmware update first. If you are satisfied with the results (speed of device response, reliability of device response) then you are done. If you want to improve your results even more (speed,reliability), I would encourage you to perform the external antenna mod.
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You can also look into adjusting the position in which you mount your hub, by that I mean the actual orientation of the hub sitting flat on a desk or standing on its end etc.. Changing the mount position changes how the radio waves are moving through home and can improve your results also.
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Thanks for your input and I agree. I have done this modification to both of my home's hubitats and have seen incredible performance improvements and just about every single aspect.
My question was more targeting if the mesh improvements negated the need to have an optimal environment, but your points reaffirm that both are helpful in their own right, possibly even needed.
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The ideal topology avoids the mesh as much as possible as the mesh adds delay to the traffic by other devices getting in between the device and hub. Direct connections avoid these hop delays and mesh congestion. Mesh has a place for hard-to-reach devices, but I'd much prefer direct for as many devices as possible.
To determine whether or not the antenna upgrade would help, you can take a look at your mesh topology and see how many devices show up in the first row and column. If it's all blue then you probably wouldn't benefit from it, but if they are mostly red then it would probably help significantly. This is a general guideline, you can look at your LWR RSSI and if you see a bunch of negative numbers then it could help for those devices as well.
The four red in my image here are directly behind a fireplace with a lot of metal surrounding it. There's not a line of site to them from the hub so unless Aaiyar or Danab wanna help me move the fireplace, those will always have to use the mesh.
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Agreed. And I want to add that because routes don't change very easily, not only does a mesh add delay, but it also adds additional points of failure. So even from that perspective, direct connections are more reliable.
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I am more than willing to supervise... 
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I’m willing to help you to tackle a bottle of bourbon while we consider the best way to get Dana to do it 
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Haha
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What are the best methods to get specific devices to connect directly? I still have a pretty decent chunk and typical 'repair' doesn't seem to make much difference. Some of these are even within about 10 feet or less from the HE with its new glamorous and ginormous antennae, odd.
Once ZWave devices have established a route back to the Hub, they are reluctant to change that route unless the route is broken. Eventually... and I by that I mean weeks or months, the devices will tend to migrate to a direct path to the Hub. Be patient and it will take care of itself. You can speed up this process by breaking the existing route so that the devices more quickly migrate directly to the Hub.
Remove the power from the devices that are being used as Repeaters, and leave them off (just for this exercise). Don't just turn off the Repeating device, remove the power. If the Repeating devices have an air-gap switch it is very easy to remove the power. Now perform a quick power off/on on the devices that you want to avoid those Repeaters. Even better, but much more work, is to Exclude the device, perform a Factory Reset which will remove the routing information from the device, and then re-Include the device. Now send some traffic through these devices. Now you can re-power the Repeating devices.
You should find that many more devices are now connected directly to the Hub. Over time, you will find some devices will connect direct and then start using repeaters, again, and then go back to direct connect. With time (months) more and more devices will just remain connected directly.
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I'm finding the opposite to this on some of my devices. I have one particular node that is like a bloody magnet to other devices. On reboot and for a few days after, the device in question has maybe only one device routing through it, then within a few more days it is routing for 6 or more devices that were previously direct. As it's a 230V dimmer module behind a switch, it's a pain to power it down as it's on the same breaker as many other devices - I'd have to power down, disconnect and terminate the supply and power up again, then repeat that.
You can try breaking the connection as @dean described. If it switches back, I'd just leave it alone as there might be a reason it's preferring that connection.
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Care to finish this up? Just need to add the ethernet port, usb port, and holes for a 40mm noctua fan. My wife keeps pulling me away to watch the kids. 
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Sure, PM me the files and I'll mod it for you.
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