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I have a Laird 5 dB Omni hanging on the side of my garage connected to a 50 Watt Repeater Station using LMR400 Coax with a lightning Arrestor grounded to earth ground at the electrical panel.

I just finished a conversation on one of my repeaters about the antics of an operator on the system last night. 
Like I personally have any control over it.  But then I realized I do have control of it.  By yanking the cord out of the wall feeding power to the repeaters.
At this point Johnstown675 and Johnstown600 (the linked repeater to midwest) are off. And may well be for good. 
 
So here's what NOT to do.  When you are a GMRS user, and you are using someone else's repeater FOR FREE because they make a serious effort to provide and maintain equipment for you to use.  Don't complain to them that someone 3 states away on a linked system was acting the fool, cussing and drunk on the repeater system.  It's a REALLY good way to make them mad.  For them to decide it's NOT worth the trouble to keep the equipment on the air and then decide to just pull the plug.
For those of you in this area that were using the link and the 675.  The jury is still out on what I am gonna do going forward.  You have ONE person to thank for it being gone.  And that's for you to figure out.  But I ain't listening to people complain to me about the actions of another on a linked system.  And if you happen to be the guy that complained.... CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!! You got the repeaters shut down.  SO there will be no more bad words on the repeater, since there will be no repeater.
 
RANT OFF>...
 
 

I would only opine that there is no magic that comes with a Technician license over GMRS. It's practically the same physics at play. I'm facing a different problem, but also physics related. I live in a dip that breaks LOS in the direction that I need coverage. GMRS focuses my solutions to the GMRS band, whereas the amateur solution spreads me over several bands, which equal more $
 
The only exception would be HF, which would do a better job at distance. 
 
Otherwise, I'm focused on doing GMRS really well as I can tune everything to be excellent at those frequencies. 

Sorry to hear that.  I'm not sure what your goals are, but I have been a Ham for close to 18 years and GMRS is a fantastic service that I use regularly. The thing about radio service is to use the proper service for the comms you are trying to have.

Omni's fall into a similar issue.  While there are some dual-band 2m/70cm vertical antennas that cover from 440-470 MHz, the gain is very low.  As gain increases, the bandwidth narrows and so does the takeoff angle, impacting sensitivity between stations with elevation difference.
 
So, if you have the expendable income, you can test it.  However, don't be surprised if the lower gain of a broad band antenna doesn't help much.
 
I have to agree with RCM on getting two service-dedicated Larsen welded Yagis.  That's going to be your best bet, relating to both performance and price.

Most UHF beams only have 15MHz to 20MHz of bandwidth they are usable for. You are not likely to find one that is going to cover 50MHz unless all of the elements and spacing are tunable (which I have never seen). That's more than double the typical bandwidth coverage.

The radio is in your shoe and Agent99 is smarter.?

Thanks for sharing that .  My RT97 is mounted in a box on the side of it's tower in the Texas sun .  I tested it buy talking to a motormouth that lives in the next town 15 miles away  in 105 deg summer heat . He talks nonstop sometimes for 9 to 12 minutes without unkeying .  I did put an air vent in it's box made from pvc pipe that came out top and turned down to keep the rain out .  It's been up and working fine for 2 years now with no problems .  It is at 70' with a 30 mile range to a mobile .  I am well pleased with it . 

Thanks for sharing that .  My RT97 is mounted in a box on the side of it's tower in the Texas sun .  I tested it buy talking to a motormouth that lives in the next town 15 miles away  in 105 deg summer heat . He talks nonstop sometimes for 9 to 12 minutes without unkeying .  I did put an air vent in it's box made from pvc pipe that came out top and turned down to keep the rain out .  It's been up and working fine for 2 years now with no problems .  It is at 70' with a 30 mile range to a mobile .  I am well pleased with it . 

Thanks for sharing that .  My RT97 is mounted in a box on the side of it's tower in the Texas sun .  I tested it buy talking to a motormouth that lives in the next town 15 miles away  in 105 deg summer heat . He talks nonstop sometimes for 9 to 12 minutes without unkeying .  I did put an air vent in it's box made from pvc pipe that came out top and turned down to keep the rain out .  It's been up and working fine for 2 years now with no problems .  It is at 70' with a 30 mile range to a mobile .  I am well pleased with it . 

Thanks for sharing that .  My RT97 is mounted in a box on the side of it's tower in the Texas sun .  I tested it buy talking to a motormouth that lives in the next town 15 miles away  in 105 deg summer heat . He talks nonstop sometimes for 9 to 12 minutes without unkeying .  I did put an air vent in it's box made from pvc pipe that came out top and turned down to keep the rain out .  It's been up and working fine for 2 years now with no problems .  It is at 70' with a 30 mile range to a mobile .  I am well pleased with it . 

RT97 “Duty Cycle”
 
I had a replacement RT97 come in today as a replacement for one that failed. The prior failed as it would not longer talk to a computer for programming. The TX/RX worked fine. I decided to test this new units “duty cycle” and heat displacement abilities.
 
The first thing I did was open it up and see what it has internally to bridge the transmitter to the aluminum outer housing. The bottom of the RX/TX unit has large fins cast into its aluminum body. It appears to be bedded in thermal paste to make a conductive path the aluminum outer housing.
 
I took a food thermometer and put it into the thermal paste. The unit was at 70 degrees.
 
The “Test”:
 
Stage One: I had it transmitting on high power. The transmission was broken up into three 1 minute sections with 10 seconds between each followed by a whole 2 minutes of TX. The transmitter rose from 70 degrees to 82 degrees. Hardly warm to the touch. (12 degree rise for 5 min Total TX w/ 40 seconds rest)  
Stage Two: I gave it about 2 minutes of rest and hit it with two more sessions of 2 minutes transmissions, separated by 20 seconds. It had fallen to just below 80 prior to and rose to 89 after.(9 degree rise for 4 min Total TX, w/ 2 min 20 seconds rest)  
Stage Three: I finally let it sit for 1 minute and did five more sessions of 2 minutes transmissions, separated by 20 seconds. The temp started at 88 and rose to 102 (14 degree rise for 10 Min Total TX w/ 2 min 20 seconds rest)  
End total of 19 min of TX w/ 3 min 20 seconds of rest. The temp rose from 70 degrees to 102 degrees.
 
What I find interesting is that after the radio “warmed up” it took significantly more time to heat up further. I expected the 10 min spent TX'ing in Stage 3 to raise it more than it did. At the end after only about 60 seconds of rest it already had dropped to 94 degrees from a high of 102. I did not repeat this test on low power but I can only assume it would take longer to heat up.
 
Being as my use with these repeaters are outdoors here in Alaska it doesn’t appear that heat will be an issue for me. During the winter our avg daily temp is around 20 degrees and we only get to an avg daily temp of 60-65 in the summer. This leaves a lot of head room. The cooler ambient temperatures should further increase the rate of heat dissipation as my home was 70 degrees to start with. Anyone see any flaws with my logic?