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All true, but we don't work in Chattanooga often (once). We need communication from our work base to several work crews in the field and from coordinator to coordinator. Sites are most often some random town in TX, LA, or FL. We'd have to have an amateur operator sitting/working with each crew and at the work base. Once the cell systems are repaired, phones work better, but until then, we'd like to be self sufficient. As for height, I may be able to put the antenna on a nearby building, but we will always have the tool trailer when a big disaster happens.

In my personal experience, using mobile with 1/4-wave on a flat SUV roof at least quadruples the range of HT to HT. And regarding Baofeng (Btech, Pofung) - stay away from these. In a disaster situation you need your radio to actually work, with extended duty cycles, with interference from other radios nearby.

One thing to note, you mentioned putting an antenna on top of the trailer. If you don't get a good antenna on a mast significantly up in the air, you aren't going to get a lot more range than you would simplex to simplex. If you were just thinking a magnetic antenna stuck to the roof, it's not worth it.

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The rules regarding GSMR are clear regarding who can hold a license. Organizations are not eligible - period. That doesn't prevent the organization from buying the radios and passing them out, BUT each user must be individually licensed. The organization can buy, install and run a repeater but they cannot hold a license. The repeater can be set up as a community resource for any user licensed for GMRS. The repeater cannot be used on FRS frequencies as they are not permitted for FRS use.

Seems like you could just use your 440 MHz / 70cm ham antenna with a coax switch. I've tested several of my hamband UHF antennas on GMRS and all seem to match up well enough. Vince

Good Day. When I started playing with radio back in the 70s I used to wonder the same thing regarding full-wave antennas. If a quarter wave antenna makes for a good working antenna and a half-wave is better, why isn’t anyone using a full-wave antennas. Well, the simple answers are 1) Antennas are larger than their shorter counter parts(a really big issue at lower frequencies) and 2) through testing it has been determined that they are very poor performers. You can be certain that with so much experimentation and research into radio and antennas for over a century that if full-wave antennas performed even remotely better they would be in heavy use. However, 1/2 wave antennas have been determined to be the clear winner. Oddly enough, even the 1/4 wave antenna is in effect a 1/2 wave antenna in that the ground plane (or ground radials) effectively satisfy the function of the missing 1/4 wave portion. If you search the internet you will find the more technical reasons why the full-wave version performs poorly. Michael WRHS965 KE8PLM