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Solar Storm to Hit Earth Today Causing GPS and Radio Disruption
(www.newsweek.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Radio works outside the city too, and most of the time I see people tossing a HF mobile rig in there. A solid one of those can run 100w off a car battery and if you can get a random wire antenna over a 35-40 foot high branch you'd probably be able to cover the country on the lower bands so long as the ionosphere isn't too irregular. You can even get car appropriate sized antennas for the higher frequency, shorter range bands.