Thanks so much for your answer. This really breaks down the problem very nicely! I'm just looking at coding out a predictor so I believe for my purposes (hot air balloon with large drag coefficient and people likely won't take one up in crazy wind shear), the balloon speed could equal wind speed, but this wouldn't be the case for something with a different shape.

So the initial energy doesn't impact distance... But a certain amount of initial energy is needed to reach a certain frequency?

Interesting. I don't have any formal education in physics and i guess I may have been applying mechanical wave properties this way.

How much energy does it take 1 wavelength does it take 144mhz radiation go one wavelength (6 feet) vs how much energy does it take 800hz radiation go one wavelength (250 miles). Since there is such a difference to reach different wavelengths... Wouldn't it take differenet amounts of energy to do so?

Woah, I see what you did there. I'm not so great at math so this approach never even ran across my mind. Thanks, Henry.