ham radio emergency nets

If I've motivated you to purchase a cheap ht such as a baofeng for monitoring local traffic, I'd suggest a slimjim antenna to go with it. You can hang them most every where. I don't know what connectors they have, so you'd need to research that part. One thing you need to know is that vhf/uhf repeaters are vertically polarized, and orienting your antenna horizontally will result in a tremendous reduction in signal strength.