Yeah - PA often gets people in trouble. I like having an external horn speaker for the stuff I receive on my ham radio, as often I work events - I'll turn on the horn when I'm parked and working in the area around the truck - often easier to hear than carrying an HT - and I'll walk back to the truck to answer a call (sometimes you just need more power than an HT will give you - both Xmit and audio drive to a speaker)
That said LumenHound is right - spend money on antennas FIRST. Do a little research on NVIS antennas - Most of the data you'll find is on Military or Ham radio stuff, so I'll give you a hint - there is a reason you see things like military vehicles with their antennas tied down besides clearance.
Almost everyone who has run CB knows about skip (which stinks right now as we are at the bottom of the sunspot cycle, and CB is the 11 meter band) - what folks DON'T know is that basically, even with skip, you have what is known as "the doughnut" - you can talk close in, by what is known as "ground wave" then you have a distance that is hard to talk to (the doughnut) and then outside the doughnut, things are good, because that's where skip works (when it does)
By tieing your antenna horizontal, most of your signal will go basically straight UP, bounce off the ionosphere, and come down - you give up skip, get a slightly weaker groundwave signal, but you fill in that doughnut that starts at around 15 miles, and runs out to say 100 to 300 miles!
Of course, to do this, you need a BIG antenna - figure a 102" whip
