Hey folks, this is my first post in this wonderful community!
I want to be able to use my HT (a Radioddity GM-30) from my vehicle. I know, I know, the car acts as a faraday cage or whatever. Duh, it's made of metal!
I'm not quite at the point where I'm ready to invest in a mobile radio (okay, okay, my wife isn't ready to invest in a mobile radio), but I do still want to be able to check in with home while in the car.
For the curious, the main use case I have right now is to communicate with home (to another GM-30) from around our little town. The range we're talking about here is literally less than four miles in most cases. The furthest I'll actually need to be able to reach is only 6 miles, and even then I have more or less perfect line of site to home. We tested! But, unsurprisingly, I get zero signal from inside my vehicle when more than about a mile away from the house.
To resolve this problem, I plan on grabbing a mobile GMRS antenna, plopping it on the trunk, and running coax up to my console, where I'll be able to screw it directly to my HT and talk! Right? I don't actually know!
On to the actual question:
Are there any gotchas I should be aware of when plugging a mobile antenna into my HT radio?
I know it won't transmit as far, given it only has 5 watts, I know it's not the ideal setup for an HT, but I'm also reasonably sure it should work for my use-case. Are there any problems that I may need to solve, or that make this solution completely untenable?
Thanks in advance!