Borage257

To be fair that only happens in one region of the world regardless of the SWR...

There’s a bunch of great content on YouTube. Some jeep channel has some stuff, ham radio crash course, ham radio 2.0 etc. all have gmrs content and some antenna stuff. You can get really in the weeds with some of the technical stuff. if you want training on how to use radios in different situations, you can search you tube for terms like “Pace plan” “soi” etc. TechPrepper has some good stuff on that, but you might look for some in person training since it’s hard to do that kind of thing by your self. GMRS is more based around bring your contacts than making new contacts with strange men.

Man y’all need to get on Radio Mobile Online

For what it’s worth, your numbers seem reasonable given the vegetation and topography. 42’ agl would yield an ideal radio horizon of about 8-12 miles. Now if you could get the antenna 42’ agl at the top of the hill….

You can get 5ft antenna pole segments at Lowe’s/Home Depot that can be attached where the antenna is now. Get the antenna above the dish and get good coax The segments have a swaged end, so if the dish is mounted on a pole, you can simply set the segment into the dish mount.

If you are using your satellite dish coax, you have an impedance mismatch. You are losing a TON of signal by using the wrong stuff. Screaming into a pillow in the garage expecting your friend a room or two over to hear you. Get some 50ohm coax, LMR400 or KMR400

Randy has spoken

You’re welcome! Pair it with a good LiFePo4 battery (20ah or more) and charger for emergency comms too!

Ed fong gmrs collinear, any of the tram/comet etc collinear ground plane antenna.

Another option would be to make a moxon antenna or yagi centered on 152.15 MHz or so

N9taxlabs makes a dual band GMRS Murs roll up jpole. Quite easy to pull it up in to a tree with a throw weight and some line. I recommend get the 16’ cable and BNC connector options. BNC mod what ever HT you plan on using with the Jpole. 12lb test fishing line or higher will make getting the antenna into a tree easier. Tie the fishing line to your throw weight (or water bottle) heave it over a branch, cut it off the bottle and tie it to your paracord and pull it back over the branch with the antenna. https://n9taxlabs.com/shop/ols/products/dual-band-murs-gmrs-slim-jim-with-10-or-16-foot-cable

Smileyantenna has a decent lineup of monoband antennas. Signalstick and Zbm2 industries has good dual band whips Those are all mom-and-pop companies based in the USA if that’s important

They both have “gmrs only” counter parts. Rt95 and RB86

Try jiggling the hand mic plug, mine will sometimes be special

Rb86/th-8600, at-778uv, at-779uv/DB20G. could also try the db25g