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I don't know how many will care about this but I built a box and thought I'd post it. For the woodworkers here, please ignore the joints. I used the miter corner "tape trick" instead of clamping and the thing blew up on me during glue up and I had to scramble for clamps. Didn't get my usual, clean corners. I was also too lazy to route the edges.

One other point that hasn't been mentioned before in this thread is the following. Since the original post requested recommendations for radios, and the usage will be in a farm setting, the physical construction and reliability will be very important. The radio(s) will likely get exposed to rain, fine dirt/dust in the air and likely dropped on soft and hard surfaces too. Many of the cheaper radios will fail. Just about all of the old LMR/commercial radios are designed for just this kind of environment. For example, I just got a used Kenwood TK-3170-K radio off of eBay, the seller took my offer of $15 when contacted by eBay's messaging system, with free shipping. The photos showed a nearly completely destroyed antenna on a radio with painted on ID and covered with dried up fine dirt/dust from being used outdoors most likely. When I got it I spent over an hour with a brush, q-tips, old tooth brush, safety pin, counter cleaner and alcohol cleaning it while using the safety pin to dig out the caked up dirt stuck in narrow cracks around the edge of the case. Once clean it looked OK with minor scuffs and a few scratches but programed fine. On air testing showed the radio was fully functional with a good battery pack and a new after market antenna. I very seriously doubt most of the cheap handheld GMRS radios being sold would have survived what this radio went through. eBay item number: 114446054336 While the RF performance of the radio is very important it still has to survive. A radio with great spec's is worthless if it breaks.

If the cable is exposed there is a good chance its done b/c once air gets inside of LMR400 the rusted braid will act as a giant noise PIM generator when rubbing the shield foil. I would just replace the cable with something new, silver plated N connectors at the very least. Heck, I would just use that as an excuse to ditch the LMR400 and go with a FSJ4-50B Heliax feedline... best move I ever made, btw. G.

I have a 40M OCF Dipole on the roof its was featured on DX Engineering, the longer side of the antenna is going in front of the house and the short side is at the backyard along the fence its been on the roof since 2017 I also have an 20M End-Fed on the side so far no notification from HOA.

Yes, I’ve had that experience. It’s even worse on the Ham bands with DMR when stations don’t get their audio levels set right. Then there is the flip side too. North of my area there is a GMRS wide area coverage repeater specifically setup for narrow band operation. I contacted the owner and had him verify it was in fact narrow band. My guess is that’s all he had or just acknowledging more users are using narrow band radios. At least with my Kenwood handhelds I can program the bandwidth for normal/narrow on a per channel basis. The radios I use have 128 channels so I program one set for normal FM and the other for narrow band. At least this helps to reduce the annoying sound level mismatch with more that two stations on frequency when the other station is stuck with one or the other bandwidths. https://mygmrs.com/view?id=3768