Returning to the hobby, garage set-up advice
Hey y'all, getting deeper into the weeds lately. A bunch of friends and fellow 4 wheelers all used to run CB radios out on the trails in our younger years. Typical nagging issues (broken antennas, radio failures, improper installs/setups etc) eventually drove the group away from it and the CBs kinda faded into the past in favor of handheld ham/gmrs/frs radios. None of us are licensed and probably won't likely be, I know I could get a gmrs license easily but for the woods I don't really see it being a huge issue. I have all my loaner uv5r's set-up to not tx to any repeaters and in low power mode to not clog up or upset the hams, still I don't love this as a solution.
I'm getting back into the hobby and am learning more and more about the technical side and radio repair. Currently working on a cobra 29 and a 25, once both are up and running I'd like to have one setup on my bench mostly for testing purposes but also listening and maybe chatting here and there. Wondering what kind of external antenna/equipment I ought to be using for my pseudo "home base" and what a proper setup would look like. I will likely be running one of the two cobras in the shop, using one of my spare batteries that lives on a tender as a power supply, and putting the other back in my jeep for the trails.
The shop I'm in is a steel building, I understand I will need a grounding rod and some sort of way to mount an antenna outside. Any advice or helpful tips are greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Edited for punctuation.