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As a preface, I should mention that I am rather green in the whole GMRS scene but I have some experience from my years in the emergency services, so I understand the bare basics. I only ever had to set up mobile systems and that was few and far between. I've maintained quite a few emergency vehicles and did a full upfit on one which turned out beautifully. For my long term setup, I want to pop a hole to the outside of my house for a base station antenna to be mounted at the roof but I need to locate a good mounting point, penetration point, and pathway to my base station setup. I also want to install the cable in conduit to protect it if i have to run most of it externally, intall a proper grounding system for lightning protection and tie it to my data grounding system I built to ensure equal potential. This being said, I have a lot of work ahead of me for that Install. I would like to temporarily set up my base station and mount my antenna inside the basement up between the floor joists near my base station location. I'm looking at horizontal mounting to keep it out of the way and looking at a ground plane. Here is a list of supplies I have so far. I plan to use a different antenna when I mount it externally on the roof. -AnyTone AT-5888UV Mobile Transceiver -BTECH RPS-30M 30 Amp Compact Regulated Bench Power Supply -Nagoya GPK-01 (21" Radials) NMO Mount Ground Plane Kit -Midland - MXTA26 MicroMobile 6DB Gain Whip Antenna -PL259 UHF Coax Cable My main question is with the antenna orientation and ground plane. The antenna mounted vertically would be ideal but I just don't have anywhere to mount it besides in the floor joists. If I mount it horizontally with the whip pointing toward the exterior butt plate of the wall, will I get decent signal reception? I should also note that some of the stuff I bought with intentions of reusing it on a mobile setup once I get the base station situated. I wanted to make sure that what I bought for the temporary solution wouldn't go to waste.

My recently purchased house is situated on top of a small hill and has an antenna setup (from a former owner, no longer used) with both yagi and dish antennas at the apex of the roof. With no nearby homes or trees to interfere, I think this is an ideal spot for a GMRS repeater antenna but have to wonder if the existing antennas could be repurposed. This would be ideal since they are already grounded and coax is wired through the walls to locations where the repeater could be installed. From what I have read elsewhere, seems the answer is that I need to remove these and install something tuned for GMRS, but I know little about antenna theory so checking with this group.

After posting about how to do an install of a mobile (Midland MXT115) in a car I realized that I'm so new to this that I should wait to do any hole cutting and cable running in my car, particularly since I spend about 30 minutes every week in it now with covid era work from home, and setup the radio in my house. https://forums.mygmrs.com/topic/2103-installationmounting-in-vehicle/ Some great information in the previous thread on the power supply, etc... and now I'm wondering about running antenna cable from the room to the roof, what antenna, etc. so am starting a new thread as suggested. Here we go...