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I have made the same point in some of my other posts. I use the radio as a tool, to get a message from point A to point B in the shortest, most comprehensible method. Started doing that on a sound powered phone aboard an aircraft carrier, continued in private industry and as an LEO. I never have been a chatty radio person on the HAM side or GMRS. The purpose of the post was the anecdotal result of my curiosity, a new radio, and a long trip.

50 is my personal best, over land. Sent from my Pixel 4a using Tapatalk

I hit a repeater like 21 miles away using Baofeng HT with stock antenna. There is a lot of houses, a lot of tree's , farm buildings, factory type buildings between me and the repeater. Should be lucky I can hit the thing at all. lol

The record from my couch to a repeater is 69 miles.. You win!

What are you using for cables to and from duplexer ? multiple adapters and poor cable will also eat up alot of power.

Agreeing that technician license is all that is needed. At Field Day this year we had a amateur member focused on communicating CW with the ISS. He had a nice setup. In consisted of a dual band ICOM radio, a homemade circular polarized Yagi mounted on top of heavy duty camera stand. Club members took turns (including myself) tracking the ISS across the sky while using a satellite tracking app on an android. There was loads of traffic to be heard. Michael WRHS965 KE8PLM

Technician or above https://www.ariss.org/contact-the-iss.html

advertised loss is 2dB so you should be seeing 27-29 W out of it based on the 42 you are seeing out of the radio.

Video review from Randy (NotaRubicon Productions). He is very funny guy: "No Chinglish here"