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A UHF Phantom antenna is NOT 3-5 dB gain. At best, it's a zero gain. You'll see them advertised as a 2.5 gain dBi (Gain over an isotropic) - which is Zero dB gain. Some people decide that 2.5 dBi rounds up to 3 dBi for advertising purposes, and since most people don't know or care to figure out what the difference is - it means that dBi ratings sell more antennas. If you want a true Gain antenna in UHF, you're going to need something taller than 1/4 wavelength. That said, the Phantom antennas are decent enough for what they are, but don't expect any miracles.

The only setup in the vehicle that we placed it on is used on our repeater. Sorry but we have not tested it any other way.

Can highly recommend the 4503. We have placed one on the roof of a truck with a magnet mount and it performs above expectations. Have talked back to our repeater with a 15 watt mobile at 52 miles point to point with it. Don't let the size fool you with this one! Would buy it again without hesitating.

Thanks Marcspaz, I'm far from expert, but this seems to me that the X50a would perform acceptably well on GMRS? I really appreciate your guidance. I'm not ashamed to admit I'm a newbie in the RF world. Just want to have a good emergency comms plan in place with my wife. (And enjoy a new hobby at the same time.) Cheers, Ken

If you are on a budget, you may want to look at these antennas, I have one tuned for GMRS and it works well on the Ham band 70 cm. I'm able to trigger repeaters 30 miles away from inside my ground floor apartment with a 25W BTECH mobile. https://www.jpole-antenna.com/

i posted this a while back, the DB-404 is an amazing antenna for the attic. Living in a CONDO i know all about the HOA as I am the president of ours. I am able to work simplex 15 to 20 miles and repeaters 45 to 50 miles away. If you scroll down I included some photos. https://forums.mygmrs.com/topic/1367-antenna-for-base-in-apartment/

Both are goo antennas for ham radio use, however I believe both are tuned for 440-450 where GMRS is 460-470, you may have SWR issues due to frequency mismatch which could lead to damage of your radios. There are some antennas with wider bandwidths but usually they are single band rather than dual. I'll defer to other more experienced hams on this as I'm still a little new when it comes to antenna tuning and matching.

Id like to see more on the linking stuff. As you said fixing the out dated repeater listings is a large task. I tend to come here only for GMRs stuff which i like. Most of the other online forums for radio stuff is all over the place. I know this is mostly GMRS so i tend to come here daily. One thought i did have and maybe its been done but a spot on "license" encouragement would be nice. I wish places like midland would do thia also but they want to sell a product and not deal with this. having a page spelling out the reasons and how to get a license, with a link to start would be cool.

If anyone wants to try out Slack, I created an account for myGMRS. Here's the link to join: [Link removed, moved to Private Discussion] I recommend putting your callsign after your name in the "full name" field (first name only is okay if you prefer).

Whats the chance we can get a chat room? Is that even a thing anymore? I like the idea of ad supported, and yes I would pay 5 bucks a month to not see them! 1. Expand our repeater linking project!