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On the VHF antenna. Most important thing is a decent radio that's of recent vintage, a minimal number of perfect connections, good quality wire/wiring, and good quality recent antenna's. Then if you've got all that start thinking about going taller. Anything over about 9 feet needs support so depending on your craft its not always practical.
I'd look into Satellite Phones and SSB (single side band) radio's. Both are accepted methods for going the distance.
Cell phone antennas are "repeaters". It's the equivalent of standing in between two people who are nearly deaf and lost their voice, then parroting their conversation back & forth at a high volume.
"cell phone" service is limited by a certain distance, depending on the mode your carrier and phone supports (some modes and frequencies go further), and possibly power of signal at the towers (which is probably regulated by the FCC so all providers may use the same limited power)..
With RF (radio frequency, anything transmitted over the air or cable) technology there's a concept of upstream and downstream, upstream being what you transmit, downstream being what you receive..
Repeaters are designed to provide a better quality service in a non ideal building, and secondly on the road, not sure how much they really can add when you get completely outside of coverage due to the downstream part.. and the cheaper the repeater the poorer its gonna work. First one I pulled up was > $1000.. probably not practical for something that's only gonna add another 5 miles or so to your cell range (if that)..
When I say downstream part it's what the repeater "hears" from your perspective. If the signal is faint (what happens over a distance) it basically disappears into the inherent background noise like a drunk girl with big tits droning on about her boyfriend at the bar. The repeater probably beats a regular phone at "hearing" due to advanced filtering and a taller antenna but there's limit to it's capability due to signal strength and SNR (signal to noise ratio, which decreases as signal strength does).
Jon
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