Dryer said," I primarily use Morse code"

My great great grandfathers cousin (I think I got that right)was Samuel FB Morse and he is buried in my families cemetary in Illinois. I do believe that somehow I got his genes.

As far as high bands, and low bands etc, this is pretty technically unsophisticated talk. Frequencies are more important. Depending on whose definition HF can go up to 30 MHz. Or if I say microwave, thats just a general definition of being over a GHz - but what does it mean? nothing.

So that said - you will tend to get only line of sight propogation of radio signals as they approach 100 MHz or higher - the FM station frequency - but still this is VHF - a definition from another time when it was considered very high frequency..

Radios operating below 20 MHz - the traditional ham bands, can send signals over the horizon and often all the way around the world with very little power. They would be the frequency of choice to get a signal out of a valley, however they are probably not digital and may not have as good of reciever electronics as more modern high frequency digital radios.

Anyway a radio is useless without an antenna and improving your antenna gain and directionality is probably more important than frequency range or output power.
Jim