There's a repeater 10 miles from my house give or take a quarter mile (this a neat web site http://www.daftlogic.com/projects-google-maps-distance-calculator.htm). I hooked the UV-5R up to my base antenna (Ed Fong clone about 20' up) and thought I would see if I could hit the repeater. I got somebody back immediately and he said he was getting a full quieting signal. I turned it down to one watt and was told my signal didn't change.

I figured it was worth a try, so I put the factory antenna back on, turned it back up to high, went out on the porch and tried again. He said it wasn't a perfect signal but was plenty good enough. I had no idea these little radios would work that well. Not bad for $36.95 shipped from Amazon.

What makes this even better is the repeater is half way between my place and town and there is a cell phone dead spot part of the way.

Get that antenna up even higher and you will really be amazed.  Height above terrain is king on VHF.

I really need to pick a couple of these up for the vehicles.

I was playing with it some more a little while ago, and found that with the base antenna I can hit 2 repeaters 17 miles away. I couldn't get anyone to talk to me this time of night so I don't know how good of signal it was but it would set the repeaters off.

It's as high as I can get it, with the base of the antenna at about 20'. If I go any higher it will be looking through a very heavy tree canopy. As it is now it looks under the canopy and out into the clear but we're still in a low spot.

I don't remember where I read it but seem to recall the article saying a rubber duck was 5db loss over a Dipole....so 5 watts into a 5db loss does not leave much power.

I have a Arrow J-pole mounted in a 6ft post out back and did a little experiment one afternoon. I knew I could hit the repeater on top of Pikes Peak (14000 Ft) on 10 watts out of the V8000 I have at home which is 80 miles plus or minus.

I hooked up my Icom V-82 HT to the Jpole and was able to get decent signal report on 5 watts. Never would have happened on the rubber duck.

I found someone to talk to on the repeater at about 17.5 miles. He said the signal was a little scratchy but plenty understandable.  Considering I live in a low spot and the repeater is not very high, I'm thrilled. I would never have thought these little radios would work that well.

I can hit my club repeater while sitting on my couch with my UV-5r and stock ducky antenna anytime.

The repeater is 33 miles as the crow flies!
 

Rather than hooking stiff coax directly to the radio with an adapter, here are two good accessories.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/370482648968

and

http://www.universal-radio.com/catalog/hamantht/4512.html

The first item, the BNC adapter, allows connection to the cable, second item above, but also now you can attach any of the many good BNC antennas, or other coax with BNC.

The second item, the pigtail is 4' long, low loss LMR-100 coax.  It goes to BNC on one end, and SO-239 on the other.  There is a similar one with male SMA.  If you used that you would need a double SMA-F barrel connector.  Since you need an adapter one way or the other, might as well be BNC.  That way you only need a 1/4 turn to connect or disconnect.

With this setup you can connect to your base antenna coax.  The long flexible pigtail lets you handle the UV-5R like a mic, and no stress on the antenna connector.

Or as I do, use it in my wife's car, with a mag mount antenna, and the pigtail connects to the coax coming off that magnetic base.  It is a NMO type mount, so I have a little 14" Diamond NR72BNMO quarter wave.  It does very well with just 1 watt, Low setting.