Hi I need help. My son(3) lives 13 miles from me on a foothill/mountain valley and I live in a small urban city. I dont get to see him much due to work and his mother but I’ve been trying to find ways to communicate with him more. Wifi is impossible up there to call or stream. Calling is a hassle cause phone bills and inconvenient times and schedules. So I’ve figured why not radios? He can talk anytime cant run a bill itll be us. But what would be good? What can I use? Two ways, ham, satellite, cb? What would you recommend try or do? I’m pretty set on finding a solution for this. I’m not looking for flak or wisdom on my situation. I just need help with my problem if I have to get a license for a cb/ham, I’ll do it.
Amateur radio would be a good choice for this if you and your son could work on studying for technician licenses for amateur radio, using a local repeater (check the Repeater Book website for repeaters near you) you could easily get away with HT’s. This is likely the easiest and lowest cost solution.
CB would likely work, but you would have to construct base stations on both ends to ensure reliable comms (may not be feasible). You can also expand the amateur setup to include base units on either end (or both but again, may not be feasible).
Another service you could look into would be GMRS but due to the distance, the use of repeaters would be required and GMRS repeaters are not as common as amateur radio repeaters.
The biggest catch would be reliability fo contacts with any of the system mentioned. I only know of one way to find out which would be best, and that. Would be to try them out. Not bad if you could borrow a couple radios to try out, buying would be expensive. Good luck.
There are programs online that can give you an indication of radio cover on various frequencies based upon your geographic location, They are called propagation maps or tables I would check these first before committing to a system out of interest where are you?