Building new house, pre-wire it for a repeater?

[WRVR303]

What about puttting up the tallest permissable "flagpole"? 

[SteveShannon]

16 minutes ago, WRVR303 said:

What about puttting up the tallest permissable "flagpole"? 

Excellent suggestion!

A vertical antenna can be easily hidden inside or alongside a fiberglass flagpole. 

[WRYZ926]

Where there is a will, there is a way. I've seen plenty of ideas to hide antennas from overbearing HOA's. 

[WSAM454]

Flagpole is a good possibility; I do not think HOAs are allowed to control your ability to fly a flag.

[WSAA254]

Just repeating what other folks have said.  The key will be the antenna, I love the flagpole suggestions, there is lots of possibilities there.

initially maybe focus on a base station and the antenna solution.  Fortunately gmrs frequencies lend themselves to small antennas.  There are "ghost" antennas which are small.   I am not in a HOA so I have more flexibility.  A attic solution may work, depending on type of roof.   There are some ghost antennas which are only 3-4 inches tall, specific for mobile installations, may not be ideal for base station, but its better than nothing.  The image below is of the antenna I use.  Its primary application if for mobile use, however with the added counterpoise ground solution it works very well for a base station. 

Since gmrs antennas can be so small, some folks will put the antenna on a roof vent, and if the antenna is only 8-12 inches tall, and it were painted the same color as the roof vent, it would probably be next to "invisible"  best of luck, there is a solution

Edited April 25 by WSAA254
Just adding a vent type bracket solution

[nokones]

If you're just trying to access nearby repeaters any appropriate antenna for the frequency will be fine and will not make any difference or change the price of rice in BFE if you use a mobile antenna. The end result will be the same and it's not like that you'll be trying to shoot skip to BFE anytime soon on GMRS freqs.

Now, for simplex base to mobile communications, that is a different story and the appropriate base station antenna will have a huge difference in performance.  In this case, you would want a quality base station antenna like a Laird FG4605 as high as you can get it.