Could end up being my Elmer. For starters, he'll know what it takes to have more coverage than a cell phone. My wife works second shift at a nursing home and there's cell signal 10% of the trip at best. Several high spots but only two are cell signal spots and not 100% of the time. It would be nice to carry a hand held in the truck and be able to walk up to the top of any hill and get a signal. Breaking down here in the boonies with hilly, curvy roads can be scary. Break down at the tail end of a curve, 55mph with gullies on each side of the road so that you can't even coast off to the side is not a good situation.
Break down in a valley and that mobile unit mounted under the dash might not do you much good.
Here's a topo with line drawn between me and him
Looks like I'm good to go, once I get permission to use his repeater. Line's a little off. Bottom end should be a bit to the left close to that heavy topo line. I'll probably get a mobile unit for the house. I'll be getting our solar panels set up again in a few months and we run a 12vdc setup with 12vdc LED lighting and an inverter for internet, TV, cordless phone and charging things. Need new batteries and charge controller. Then I can run the mobile unit off of that and it will work even when the power goes out. My buddy's got an old steel antenna tower I can probably get for next to nothing. Should be stout enough to not need guy wires. Just a 3 foot cube footer and fabricate a hinge system for the bottom. Maybe a brace to the house. Might be 30' or so but I can add some 2-3 inch thin wall pipe to the top and get to 40 or so.
Geez, now I need GMRS units for the property and tech capable Ham units for around town. GMRS first. Wonder if I can talk my wife into getting a tech license.
Need to break out the old CBs and give them a test run. We've got a handheld and very basic mobile unit, no sideband, that we used to communicate between the two vehicles when we moved out here. LOL, I drove an old wrecker with boom removed but stored on the bed to make room for a 5th wheel hitch pulling a 35 foot camper, loaded with tools and equipment. She drove a loaded 14 foot Ford box truck with van cab, pulling a 24 foot car trailer with vehicle and two 1970 Sears garden tractors, 1965 truck cab and misc stuff. Lived off grid in the camper for two years while we looked for land. First winter, I took the box off the box truck, cut a hole in the side of the camper and stuck a wood stove in it and we used it as a kitchen. Both were old and not worth much and eventually got scrapped when they were paying good prices. Got almost as much as we paid for them, minus money spent on making them roadworthy. Hard core and poor. Good preparation for communism I suppose.