My haplogroup is R1a1a on my Dad's side. This gives tremendous insight to the source of your paternal/maternal lines come from. I would never have guessed mine included Isle of Man, Norway, Brahman India, Mideast and on and on. It doesn't give the whole picture just two. Remember you're doubling every generation for awhile. So once you've gone back a few generations it could be 2 of 64,128....1024 or more. In context By my 3rd GGrands I'm back over 200 years and have 32 unique families. Check Wikipedia haplogroups for more detail.
For a woman to get her Fathers line she needs to use her brothers, the Father's brother or other direct male The same would be true of any other male line. Like your Mothers surname line. You have to find a male relative for each of those lines which can be difficult once you go back a few generations.
The nice thing is that even though it's a limited window it's exciting to know your actual roots. I would never have even vaguely thought of the aforementioned links. That it was just England. When in fact England barely pops up at all.
BTW there are frequent specials which reduce the costs. Also you can begin with smaller number of markers. They generally begin with 12, then 24 37 67 the more markers the higher specificity and the more recent the ancestor match when it happens.
