As others have said, ham UHF vs GMRS, you won't notice a difference with HTs. VHF high (2m) will get a bit further under normal conditions. VHF low (6m, 50MHz) gets to the point that an adequate antenna is the issue for HTs. It will act the same as 2m without atmospheric propagation helping, but when propagation is open, there are thousands of stories of talking across the USA on only 5w.
Heh. My wife doesn't necessarily participate, but finds them useful at times. She didn't really say anything after she saw my last purchase order other than "that's a lot of money" then walked away and didn't mention it again.
You want hardline, like Heliax (Comscope/Andrews) or whatever RFS calls it. At 50', you are looking for 1/2" or 7/8", unless you can find a deal for larger somewhere.
As mentioned, testing of an HT antenna is nearly impossible to get completely accurate results. It should also be noted that sometimes a "better" antenna will cause the radio to perform worse due to RF saturation. That being said, for the APX, the Motorola antenna will work the best for that radio.
Other than shortcuts, the keyboard is only useful for DTMF tones, which could be used to control a repeater's features, such as changing the input tone, or disabling the repeater during a malfunction. It's not a huge selling point for many radios.
It's in the rules.
Fixed station. A station at a fixed location that directly communicates with other fixed stations only.
Base station. A station at a fixed location that communicates directly with mobile stations and other base stations.
47 CFR 95.303
An example of a fixed station would be an RF link between 2 repeaters. They only talk with each other, at fixed locations.
Anything commercial from Harris/Motorola/Kenwood
TK-3140 has Part 95 approval and can do multiple zones up to 250 total channels.
You likely won't find anything in the cheaper chinese radio market.
4 isn't really that many if you have difficult terrain to overcome. Yes, it's an investment, but if it's useful to you, who cares. Now, having 4 tower leases, or even have someone willing to lease you tower space, that's the impressive part, considering crown castle won't even return a phone call.
Yea, all my LiFePO4 batteries are bioenno, and I bought their charger with the battery. They do stop charging (LED goes green from red) when the battery is full.