Today, I put my rangemaster on 1700; i was fighting with Oakland Int'l airport, but I managed to get a solid 1.2 miles clear as crystal sound.
What's so remarkable about this? No grounding at all. This was on a 6' pole on top of my house (so about 25' up) - zero grounding. and a coupler with a 16" extender on my 102" antenna to give me my 3 meters.
I got the idea from a fella on facebook.
so that tested and working even under the evil that is oakland's 10watt thing on the other side of the bay from me, i presume that grounded this may work better, but totally legally.. its doing 1.2 miles in dirty channels..