New into ham got the "bang-phone" yeah I know that's not how you spell it and it's cheap but it's what I have now.

I want to do this for communication in remote areas I regularly go. They are mountains and although my goal is usually to be on top and from there I can receive from 50 miles away on the cheap bang-phone. Often though weather dictates I can not get to the top of the 10,000 ft peaks.

So my question is how can I ensure I can reach someone out of these remote areas? My experience is pretty limited but even at 8,000 ft I was often not getting signal from the "local" repeater on the handheld consistently. Would HF be better for this use? Given weight considerations I am limited to a handheld although I do want to get a better one.

Sometimes I might be stuck in the valleys with mountains all around I get nothing on UHF or VHF then, would HF bounce me out ?

There are ways to "bounce out" HF over a mountain. Google NVIS propagation and antennas. This technique is quite popular and is even used by the military. The antenna can be long and somewhat bulky and you will need a portable HF radio like a Yeasu FT-817d, Elecraft KX2 or KX3 or an Icom IC-703 with a 12V power source.
Low power can be problematic on HF. This is why a lot of guys who operate QRP (low power) radios prefer to use CW. Some digital modes work well at low power but you will need to bring a laptop or at least an Android tablet with an interface.
Operating HF requires some knowledge, experience and practice. YOu need at least a General class ham license. It's not a very simple "plug and play" solution. A sat phone is a lot easier to use and will work in most places. Some guys place small cross band repeaters, powered off solar panels, on top of a mountain.

I often wonder if a small cross band HT, like a Wouxun, can be lifted up in the air with one of those quad-copter drones. This could make a cool  temporary repeater. I don't know much about drones. The radio should probably be hung on a long fishing line to avoid interference with drone electronics and remote control comms. I think drones are legally limited to 500 ft AGL and it may not be enough in the mountains. It should provide a heck of a coverage over flat terrain.

The concept of drone-mounted repeaters is of great interest to me.

Most of that was over my head as I am just getting started but i think you missed the point. It's 10k ft plus in the winter
and I am there on foot or skis, a tablet, drone and a bunch of other stuff isn't really helping me.

I'm looking for highly mobile solutions for climbing big remote mountains

The problem is that radio waves at the frequencies (UHF, VHF) of the radio you are using do not really bend or bounce.  They are pretty much just line of sight, and they punch right through the atmosphere.  Anything, like a mountain, in the path will block the signal.   Nobody is suggesting you carry extra gear just to carry extra gear, they are trying to explain what will work using HAM equipment.  If you want a light, simple solution, sat-phone has already been suggested.  

The only way to communicate with your handheld in the mountains is to be high enough on the mountain to have line of sight to the repeater/other party.

At the lower frequencies of the HF band, you can bounce your signal off of the atmosphere, but the antennas are much bigger, the power requirements are generally bigger(heavier battery), and it is generally a portable option more than a foot-mobile option.  The bottom line is that it isn't as simple as "buy this and you're good to go", all of the Ham solutions will require some (probably a bunch) learning on your part.

Thank you I appreciate your answer. Basically not gonna happen in a Walkie talkie size solution is what I am hearing. I would be ok packing a large antenna but bigger power source would just kill my mobility.

I don't mind the answer being not realistic climb higher or buy a sat phone, I mostly don't want to go down a pointless rabbit hole when I start upgrading.

I think you missed the point, actually.  The kx2 with lipo is about the size of an HT, and with a bit of wire and coax you could certainly make contacts across the country no matter where you were on the mountain.  CW would be a great force mult, but even on phone i've gotta think you're going to find someone who can hear you.

Sorry to disappoint you but a sat phone may be your only solution. You can also try Spot or Delorme satellite communicators.

HF NVIS is the only thing that will work without having a repeater or a satellite service. Getting  signal over a tall mountain is a lot more difficult than talking to a station 1,000 or even 5,000 miles away. This is why NVIS antenna, installed low to the ground, is used for close range communications on HF bands. It can only be done on the lower frequency bands too. There is a lot to learn before you can successfully get it accomplished.
Like I said previously, it will require a radio, batteries and a wire antenna. The antenna will be quite long and you will need to place it on small trees or some fiberglass sticks, about 7 ft above ground. Low power may be tough to copy on the receiving end. This is why many guys use CW (Morse Code) because it has a lot more "punch" than voice SSB modulation. A similar setup will be needed on the other end.
This is not something you can pull out of your pocket and call your buddy.

This question comes up over and over again. To put a finer point on what's already been posted:

Simple, quick, tiny, lightweight, instant gratification with near zero training or skill required, even if badly injured, and reach whoever you want via text, email or voice: Iridium satphone or Iridium text messenger (inReach)

Complex, slow, small but not tiny, requiring training, skill and practice to reach some random station that may or may not help you and that you probably couldn't set up to reach if badly injured: amateur radio HF comm's.

Note that HF need not be NVIS. Indeed, you are more likely to contact someone quite far away via skywave than via NVIS, even in a canyon with a low antenna.

Note also that you can come up with a Delorme inReach (older than the Garmin units but still serviceable) for $270 vs. about $1000 for a KX2 and all the accessories you'll need to go along with it. That $700 difference will buy you nearly 4 years of satellite emergency-only service.

I've played around with a few options. My favorite and best result was using a THd72 in digipeter mode. I sent it up to 400ft and made HT to HT connection at 30miles

What if let's say I am just an it out of range of a repeater. On VHF. Any practical options to get some extra reach and still have good mobility?

There are too many variable involved to give you a solid advice. You can use a more efficient antenna. It will most likely be longer and somewhat bulky. It depends on which band you use and what antenna you choose. This will most likely be your best option.
You can also use a directional antenna and hope that some of your signal will be reflected off one of the mountain walls. A directional antenna will be even more bulky. You will need something you can take apart and reassemble quickly.  It's a crap shoot and really depends on your location, location of the repeater, elevation and terrain features between you and the repeater.
Polarization is very important for line of sight communications. This means that you need to hold your radio with antenna in a vertical position to get the best chance to reach a repeater.  Sometimes it helps to try transmitting and receiving in both vertical and horizontal position because your signal may be reflected off a mountain. When signal is reflected, polarization rotates 90 degrees. It may help a little but it's a crap shoot too.

I still think that a sat phone or a satellite communicator like Delorme or Spot is your best option if you want somewhat reliable communication in the conditions you described.  IMHO, I would not rely 100 % on a satellite gismo either. Always have a plan "B" and be prepared.

This sounds very interesting. Do you mind sharing some details on what drone you used and how you attached the radio to the drone? Maybe start a separate thread? I'm sure many guys will be interested.

I'm gonna sound alot like an echo chamber since alot of people have already said most of what I'm going to say. But since I acutally do have a fair amount of experience using radios in the middle of nowehere in the rockies perhaps some of what I say can be of use.

1. Radio waves go in straight lines (mostly).
2. If you are on a mountaintop with decent elevation you will have a lot better luck getting your signal out, be it HF or VHF.
3. NVIS is the solution you seek but it is not "magic" I constantly hear folks that clearly have never or seldom used this mode of propagation just telling people how "easy" it is to use. Among several issues, one of the big ones not mentioned is that there may be no people listening for you within the propogation zone, and even if they can hear you, you may not be able to hear them since they need an NVIS antenna setup as well.
4. If you are backpacking radios around for emergency use you will be power and weight limited which basically means you should learn CW
5. The solar cycle is currently sliding into the shitter and it will be a bad few years before it gets much better, something to keep in mind.

You might find my QRP setup instructive, its certainly not the only way to go for this, and for back country work I tend to leave parts of it behind, but it runs 5-6lbs weight wise. I've updated it since then, mainly reducing size and weight, but its a starting point.

Lightweight Backpacking Setup


Middle of nowhere radio pic just for fun... 14,000 ft means the signal goes farther (thats a joke son)

Yup, totally agree with GCW here. You can get a portable yagi antenna from Arrow Antennas for about 80 bucks IIRC, and it is used by hams primarily for satcom work (which also won't work for your purpose). But a gain antenna like that may let you hit a repeater in situations where a crappy duck antenna won't work. Again, radio waves mostly go in straight lines...

With regard to a sat-phone. Quite often you will run into the same problem as with your HT if you are in the bottom of a valley. A sat phone needs to have a good LOS to the satellite for it to work.

I always hike with my VX8R and a ladder-line dual-band J-pole and was always able to at least handshake one or more repeaters from various places on the trail.  Most of my hikes were the Olympics and some in the Cascades, with a summit the usual goal.  See http://www.2wayelectronix.com/Portable-Antennas_c3.htm

My normal radio kit is the VX8R, the J-pole, and a sack of 550 cord.  I look for a rock to tie on for throwing the line up over a tree branch when I'm on site to keep the weight down.

You aren't going to find anything fool-proof with the handheld radio; you will need to experiment.  Get on the trail and try it out.  Keep notes about which repeater you can hit from what direction.  Keep in mind that getting the repeater to respond doesn't necessarily mean anyone can hear you, but you can make an educated guess based on the clarity of the signal you receive back from it.

Thanks, in your experience how much of a difference did your antenna setup make vs the rubber duck?

Significantly better than the rubber duck.

I was hiking with a woman up to the top of Mt Zion.  She does some solo hiking and I pushed her to get her tech ticket, and she even bought the same radio that I have.  From the summit I was making contacts easily on simplex with stations in Seattle.  She could not. Same radio; she using her stock antenna and me with the j-pole in the tree.  I let her connect her radio to the j-pole while I went back the stock (to try some 6 meter repeaters) and she was easily making the Vashon repeater (UHF) and talking with the guy that taught the radio class she took there.

A roll up J-pole like that is better than a duck by a significant amount, but a portable yagi will be better still.

Figure it like this 3db gives you doubling of your signal strength.

Your duck, will probably have negative gain, depending on the antenna circumstances, lets be really optimistic and say its -3db... (meaning your radiated 5W signal, is probably more like 2.5W, and in reality its probably less)

A roll up j-pole might have something like 4db of gain, with 6ish db being "max" for a well installed real Jpole made of copper tubing (your roll up Jpole is not going to be this since its compromising on alot of factors for the sake of being portable) of course this is low angle radiation, which you may or may not really want. I actually have used one of these while hunting, and it worked fine, hardest part was finding a tree to hang it in...

A Yagi like the arrow antenna, will probably be on the order of 8-12db in the real world. However it will also be highly directional, which is either a good thing, or a bad thing depending on if you know where your repeater is, or if you know how you can bounce a signal off the side of a mountain.

That being said, no amount of gain will get you through a mountain or a hill, if you are in a valley, you are basically relying on some sort of reflected signal, which may or may not work.

Arrow antenna. This is the 4 element version, there is a cheaper/smaller 3 element version as well. He also has dedicated 2m and 70cm ones if your repeaters are all on a single band.
Arrow 2m/440 antenna

Cool, it doesn't look like much weight penalty for the antenna.

Thanks for the info although 8-12 lbs is getting into no go for me. i am staying out multiple days in winter so my head is already pretty heavy.

Where are you getting 8-12 lbs from? My PRC-104 kit (pictured above) weighs in at about that, and I mainly only use my milpacks like that for SOTA ops, since they are heavy as hell.

Those arrow antennas are pretty light. 19ish ounces per the website (full disclosure, I don't own one, I have a far shitter 4 dollar satcom antenna I built for that purpose)

And even my entire QRP setup doesn't weigh that... Figure the FT817 is like 2lbs, figure another pound or two for tuner and antennas, external key etc. ~3-4lbs tops. But you got to run it CW. I have a whole spreadsheet on it.

IF you can learn CW, you can get 1lb KX-1 radio that is marginally larger than your HT, my entire setup with a KX-1 is like 2lbs for multi-day backpacking with antennas. BUT you have to learn CW...

I will add that if you can't or won't learn CW, I have succesfully used my 817 with a wolphi link and cell phone in the past. It sucks running data modes on a phone (mainly issues with RFI locking up the screen in my case, but that may be phone dependent). You can also get weather fax/navtex on it if you set it up, but thats getting fancy.

wolphi phone interface


One good way to look at this, you often see novice backpackers carrying 300lbs of shit they don't really need. But they "think" they need all of it and so they haul it. They lack the skills and background to know what they need, and you really only get that through experience. Frankly I carry my HF gear when packing more for fun than "emcomm" but using it this way really lets me know the limitations of the gear, and to adjust my expectations accordingly.

One of the big plusses of the 817 is the fact it can do VHF/UHF as well as HF if need be. But alot of people will rightly reccomend a KX2 or KX3 from elecraft which have more TX power on HF than the 817, which does help IMO. But the 817 is way more durable feeling than any elecraft product i've handled.

J poles aren't heavy, but neither are hand held yagis which are better. You might also consider a better "duck" antenna. I have a maldol whip for mine which makes a decent difference on my VX-5R's. It is ~19" IIRC vesus the 3-4" yaesu duck antenna.

As you might have noticed. There is a lot to learn if you want to go the ham radio route. This is why amateur satellites were never mentioned.
Try getting a better antenna first. Ply with it and learn to use it. You can read all kinds of books but some things can only be learned by doing this and gaining experience. A $1,000 pocket HF radio with NVIS antenna won't do you much good if you have no experience using it and knowing all the tricks.

Good luck with your endeavors. Ham radio is an amazing hobby. Imagine sitting near a mountain top and chatting with a guy in Germany or Colombia. This can be very addictive. Hope you enjoy it.

Thanks to everyone for the replies. At this point I think I am best off getting a little more reach out of what I have hitting local repeaters. I know the ones I can hit from mountain top already with rubber duck I'll see what I can do with better antenna.

If a better antenna allowed me to connect just 1,000 ft lower that would be huge. The one thing I have learned about ham for sure is that it is a very complex game. Most of the complexity might not be for me but I will see as o develop my experience.

Thanks

Good observation about hauling gear. 

Best thing to do is go on a trip with everything you think you need, and when you get home, ditch everything you didn't use so your next trip you don't haul around anything unnecessary. Or just take a jeep and bring everything. :D

Get an InReach and done. I have been playing around with HAM for a while and have a nice mountain right behind me.  My understanding has been power is the big factor. 

Yup, many decades of backpacking have taught me that I'm not 20 years old anymore and that I need to be picky about what I haul, and that the mantra "skill replaces stuff" is a very good one to adopt.

What is power a big factor for?

Ironically enough my first packset was a mil radio that I was fairly familiar with. I stripped it down to bare bones to take into the woods, but it was still probably an extra 15lbs in my pack which added pretty significantly to my load. I hauled that bastard around for about 2 years of backpacking, and I had made some backwoods and mountaintop SSB QSO's with it (50W rig). I eventually realized I'm no longer 20 years old and I wanted something lighter. So I picked up a used FT817 to haul around, didn't really test it much beforehand aside from basic function (mistake #1), tossed it in the pack for a few day trip with a paar EFZ, the whole thing weighed maybe 3-4lbs. Got it in the woods, and made exactly 0 QSO's for an entire trip despite hearing alot of folks. Turns out 5W with an 817 on SSB with no audio compressor kinda sucks, also turns out the battery life absolutely sucked as well (alkalines). That trip was my first real impetus to re-learn CW and to double check/test my assumptions about my gear. These days I either carry the KX-1 or the 817 if I'm going to do voice, but I've learned most of the tricks of the 817 these days and its been significantly upgraded since then. I haven't tried it out much this year as band conditions haven't been great.