Daniel, I see you are in Corpus, at present time only 1 repeater in the whole place, and it is not operational yet, out in Flour Bluff, when it is online, it May orMayNot coverwhere you live just looking at google maps. First of all, in Corpus there are probably Not going to be many gmrs repeaters up on commercial towers,,So ur HT, is not gonna do a very good job like one will do with amateur radio , with tall towers and 100 watt repeaters. most of the repeaters within 45 miles of you to are 10 watt(5-6watts after duplexer) Retevis RT97 repeaters, with antennas avg height of 30 ft on pushup poles( american tower company owns nearly all the big towers in the rural areas , and they dont want gmrs ot ham on their stuff( I know because I have one of them on my ranch).They still are goid repeaters, we are getting 15-25 mildes coverage with them( we are located in Refugio, Aransas, and San Patricio Counties, 6 repeaters scattered around up here.) So plan on getting a 40 -50 watt mobile radio, either for vehicle,with a midland 6db magnet mount antenna on the center of your roof, or if your lucky enough to live in a house with NO HOA gestapo,a 50 watt radio, a power supply, 50 or so ft of lmr400 coax, a 40 ft pushup pole , good to 30 ft without guying it if attached to eve of house, and a Good gmrs base antenna, i suggest a comet CA712EFC. Now for the bad news. With either of those setups, you may be able to get into the new flour bluff repeater, its antenna will be at 50 ft I believe, but it is one of the low power repeaters.And its owner id am a ateur radio guy brand new to GMRS, and he will have the same learning curve that the rest of us did getting things Just right to squeeze all the distance he can outta a low power system. That said, Chances are slim that you will be able to hit any of the other repeaters ( possibly Ingleside from certain areas of CC), But you still have simplex going for you. Over 110 folks in CC show to be licensed, all u gotta do is find some of em. If you come North of Portland you have much better chance of contacting some of our repeaters oreven catch some of the group on simplex (just about everyday 0500 to 0900 on the Bayside, or ingleside repeaters, and monitor ch19 simplex no tones, and ch 16 simplex no tones. We try to monitor bayside all day.Look up the repeaters in our area, on mygmrs hit the permission button, and you will get a response.
If you are an amateur operator several of us monitor 146.500 simplex. We can answer questions you may have . Good luck!
WQRJ814/ KF5WTB