Well - I threw away most of my links to reception- but I will try to help you off the top of my head.
Most effective communications is line of sight. Line of sight is very limited.
If you build two towers about 48 miles apart , each tower being 1000' tall.
If you climb one of those towers to the top - you would be able to see the light blinking on the top of the other tower.
Height equals gain.
The higher up you get the transmit antenna and the higher up you get the receive antenna - the further you will be able to receive a signal 100% of the time.
When you get your transmit / receive antenna up higher your horizon increases.
At some point - say 37,000 miles - one antenna can effectively communicate to one whole side of a planet and regardless of how much higher you get the antenna - it will go no further.
That is the reason why Moon Bounce works.
If both stations can see the moon - you can effectively transmit and receive as much as 12,000 miles.
Anything other then that - your reception will depend on the signal being able to hop - such terms as E Hop generally indicate that it bounced off the E Layer of the atmosphere and it will have a range of 450 - 3000 miles. Multiple hops increases your ability to receive and transmit further.
So basically if you want to receive something - the first thing that cannot be compromised is the antenna location of the receive antenna. Your antenna needs to be a certain size and shape and aimed in a certain direction with a certain amount of gain and it needs to be as far away from electrical noise as possible.
This might also include using some type of low noise mast head amplifier and a good receiver with special roofing filters and notch filters.
The bottom line is - why bother.
There isn't anything of interest on those bands anyways.
The plane goes up / the plane goes down.
The pilot gets it up into the sky and puts the plane on auto pilot and the ground control tracks the plane and gives their altitude and course headings for their destination.
It isn't like as if you are going to hear steamy sex conversations or drug deals, like on a telephone or cell phone..
By the time you get your system all built and operational - you would probably just get bored of it and have to take it down anyways...
Non-line-of-sight propagation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Read this article - you might enjoy it.
TV and FM DX - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Just for the record - I DX television from my location and the furthest I ever received a analog television signal was Nebraska and Boston New York from Punxsutawney Pennsylvania and Florida to the south.
500 - 1500 miles on a good day....
I also received WDTV - West Virginia 120 miles from my location.
For you - that would be like listening to a kid on a 500 mw walkie talkie from one hundred miles away..
Even the owner of the station called me up and said he couldn't receive his own signal from 20 miles away at his home QTH.