I live in a draw, well below local average ground level. There are two repeaters I want to be able to use (because they're in the network my club uses). One is in the 440 band, thirty miles away but more than a thousand feet up in a pass, with a small mountain (a little lower than the repeater) directly between; the other, on 2m, is on a radio tower fifteen or so miles away, but with the ridge that forms one side of my draw blocking.
Short of installing my own repeater or antenna on a tower high enough to get over the surrounding terrain, is there a trick for hearing and being heard by either of these repeaters while at home? I have 8W of transmit power available on a 16" Nagoya antenna that replaced the original on my BaoFeng BF-F8HP.