Longest FM two meter contact - not using a linked repeater

[Mr. Ham]

About 3 years ago, when I started to mess around with 2 meters FM, I bought a new Yaesu FT 8900R radio, but had no antenna or coax.
In the cellar was some old coax that I had from the old CB radio days and sitting in the corner of the shack was a old Antenna Specialist droopy ground plane scanner antenna - low band VHF.

Not knowing any better, I went to the junk pile and fetched some old water pipe home, along with some old galvanized fence pipe I had in inventory and set to work making a mast long enough to get the antenna high enough to make some local contacts.

The VSWR was low enough that most of the 50 watts that the 8900R produced on two meters was being radiated.
I was proud of the fact that my Uniden 890XLT scanner, using a repurposed Winegard 8200U antenna and Channel Master CM 7777 pre amp was able to pick up simplex and repeater communications in Warren PA - 75 miles away.

Not knowing any better, I thought this was normal communications for anyone that was a ham.
I listened mostly with that set up until I was brave enough to make my first contacts. I burned up the local repeater making as many contacts as I could the first weekend I got my license. Something like 3oo contacts in one weekend on a linked repeater system..

I programmed into the Yaesu every coordinated repeater pair in central and western Pennsylvania and I was just sitting there listening and I heard a school round up on a unused repeater frequency..
It was not linked to any other repeater....
I went on QRZ.com and looked up the repeater and then the frequency and then changed the PL in the radio and squeezed the mic and the repeater kerchunked and so I threw out my call sign and a student came back to me and we talked for about 5 minutes. The school was in Tennessee.

Not to be outdone a couple of weeks later, in the late evening I heard another repeater identify and I looked up the call sign and then the PL and then I changed the PL in my radio and the operator that came back to me was in Florida. This was not a linked repeater!

From that day on - I refuse to talk on the linked repeater system unless I am in the mobile and lonely and willing to put up with the same conversation - over and over again.

Hi, I am so and so, I am on my new Bofung or Woshun walkie talkie, how do I sound, seventy threes blaah blaah blaah...

I thought that between those two meter contacts and the 6 meter band openings I have been able to find that sooner or later I would have seen my call sign in QST Magazine, but I guess that you have to be a big time operator with a huge beam antenna, a tall tower and a 1000 watt amplifier to get a reputation.