If you're cruising along out of sight of land and suddenly catch fire, how can you depend on calling the Coast Guard for rescue ... if your VHF radio won't even reach halfway to shore?
Gimme the radio that transmits the farthest
The top of the antenna on a small pleasure boat is usually no more an 12-15 feet above the surface, while the Coast Guard monitors VHF marine traffic from huge antennas hundreds of feet high.
So a two hundred foot-tall tower can "see" transmissions from 30 miles away because it's "radio eye" is so high above the earth's surface: its height gives it a much greater line-of-sight.
Antenna height above the surface is the only solution for the getting past our horizon problem; your radio's "power" has nothing to do with it.
Now, please stand by for the flip side
Folks who should know better still insist upon buying a certain radio because "It transmits the farthest" without stopping to consider this: what if your radio isn't sensitive enough to pick up the response?
You would wanna hear the response to your distress call, wouldn't ya?
Or when the going gets rough, are we more interested in filling the sky with emergency pleas for rescue and assistance than we are in shutting up and making our best effort to listen, hear and completely follow the instructions accompanying the response?
-- -- --
The LORD is far from the wicked
but he hears the prayer of the righteous.
- Proverbs 15:29
I call on you, O God, for you will answer me;
give ear to me and hear my prayer.
- Psalm 17:6
And the LORD said to Samuel: "See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make the ears of everyone who hears of it tingle."
- 1 Samuel 3:11
He who has ears, let him hear.
- Matthew 11:14
