In days of old when I was bold my first 2 Meter Rig was a heathkit lunchbox.. Skip forward to my 2nd, a Regency 10 watt rock bound rig...
I made a simple "Twin lead" J-Pole (Described in QST and other ARRL publications) and tied a string to it, Alley OPP over a tree limb and hosted it perhaps 10 feet..
The "Local" repeater was over 15 miles away and signal was solid..
That was the repeater I was responsible for founding..
Another repeater was a good 20 miles and that too was hittable with hand helds.
Many hand held radios today have very poor antennas. A better antenna makes a BIG improvement.
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