Outback Communication Requirements Explained

Travelling the outback can bring about all sorts of unexpected circumstances. Ensuring you can communicate from your vehicle to other vehicles in close proximity is essential for safety reasons (eg. warn oncoming vehicles when visibility is impaired), can aid in navigation (convoy procedures), and call to nearby travellers for help. However, you can't always rely on other people being nearby. All travellers should anticipate the need for long-distance communication in the event of an emergency and should choose a device most suited to their needs.

Contact with family and friends although important, should be considered secondary to your requirement to be able to coordinate a speedy emergency rescue. Note - in past times, travellers were requested by police to log their itinerary at each start and end point of a journey through remote country. Today things have changed and the police would prefer that travellers were self-sufficient with modern communications equipment and used a point of contact with a family member, close friend or a network rather than use up valuable police resources.

UHF Radios have become the more popular choice of CB, mainly due to their considerable price drop over the past decade and with repeater locations constantly growing throughout Australia, UHF CB users are gaining more coverage. 27MHz CBs used to be very popular, however with the advantages of UHF Radios and other communications devices such as HF radio, satellite phone and mobile phones, this is starting to diminish.

UHF radios provide FM quality, short range, line of sight communications and are excellent for convoys. In general, a UHF radio is not of much use in an emergency unless someone happens to be in range of your location - usually much less than 50km. Handheld units are useful because you can walk to higher ground and greatly extend the range if the vehicle is in a valley, or the battery is flat. Owning a pair of handhelds is also useful for bushwalking or in just about any situation you can imagine. In areas where repeaters are installed communication up to many hundreds of kilometres is possible. They are popular in pastoral country with stations operating on public & private repeaters.

Most, if not all modern UHF CBs can scan all channels and lock in on a channel when a signal is heard. This overcomes the problem of not knowing which channel the repeater or the homestead is operating on. We suggest you scan all channels when travelling in unknown regions to pick up all transmissions.

To transmit on a UHF Repeater, you need to select an appropriate channel based on your proximity to a repeater station. Modern units usually work this out automatically.

These days there is only a very loosely applied code of speech and you can basically talk normally without any formalities or code words. Some people still use "Roger" or "Copy" to confirm they have received the message. "Over" is still in general travel use to indicate the end of transmission, but not by regular users that know one-another well such as between station operators or when reception is very clear for both parties. It is however very impolite to play music, swear or use a channel already in use by another party.

The existence of an ionosphere surrounding our earth allows the use of High Frequency (HF) radio as a means of communication over long distances. All that is required is an HF transceiver and access to a set of frequencies. The frequency limits of HF communication is 3 MHz - 30 MHz. The right to transmit on these frequencies is governed by the Australian Communications Authority.For any given distance and time, there will be a certain range of HF frequencies that are most likely to provide successful communications; frequencies outside that range will work poorly or not at all.

Various groups (service providers) own the right of usage to a set a frequencies and you need to decide which one provides the coverage (and other services) that suit your needs.You can generally expect higher frequencies to be better at reaching out further than lower frequencies and longer ranges are usually found at night. Lower frequencies are also more suitable at night time, while higher frequencies are more suitable during daylight hours.

Telephone Calls from HF Radio

Another use of the HF radio is a direct dial service, where the HF radio is used to access the Australian LAN for regular voice calls. This service is available from the VKS-737 network. You will need to subscribe to a network that provides the direct dialling facilities. Many travellers enjoy the benefits of both types of services and take out subscriptions with each.

We have been using HF Radio Telephone networks since 1998 and have seen a massive improvement to these services in ease of use, functionality and low costs. Most services include a free emergency selcall direct to Police and RFDS and also offer a flat call rate to all phone lines including mobile (unlike the expense of Satellite Phone systems). Some services also offer free vehicle position logging (taken verbally as a message from you to the operator as it is with the VKS737 network).

There is actually no incoming voice call service, when you use an HF Radio Telephone service however a Message Service provides a facility where family, friends or work associates can simply phone the base operators on a regular phone line and give the operator the message which will then be passed on to the radio.

There are currently a few services throughout Australia that can provide the telephone service from your HF radio. The ExplorOz Team have used the Telstra RDD service (that is no longer available), RadioData, and in more recent years we've used RadTel. Services and charges are quite different so shop around to find the service that best suits you.

More information on these types of radios are available in our HF Radio article.
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As essential as these phones may seem, it may surprise you to know that mobile phone coverage is very limited in the Australian outback and therefore a mobile phone should not be relied upon for outback emergency communication.

Telstra continues to offer the widest coverage but only in populated areas. Depending on the model of phone you'll typically only have service from a 30km radius of the town site. Unless towns are close together and broadcast areas overlap you are pretty well without a mobile phone outside this range. Take a look at Telstra's coverage map of Australia and notice the distinct lack of coverage in Central Australia. Most of the larger towns with populations of around 10,000 people will generally offer service from the other service providers.

Note that mobile phone coverage is also affected by the natural terrain. Hills and mountain ranges can affect the ability to transmit and receive signal.

Probably the largest area of satellite usage is the telephone market. The uptake of satellite phones in the tourism sector, is growing with hand-held satellite phones easy to use, easy to obtain, and they provide a reliable, private, communication service to users. SatPhones are also now available with dual modes enabling CDMA/Satellite or GSM/Satellite, allowing you to carry one handheld phone device and selecting the most appropriate network for your needs.

Satphones can be either purchased outright for less than the cost of purchasing and fitting an HF radio and antenna to your vehicle, or hired. Various plans are available to suit your needs.

Don't forget however, that if you are going to rely on a satellite phone as your only method of emergency communication, you will need to take a list of emergency contact numbers. Note - just like a mobile phone, a satphone will enable you to direct dial Police or Ambulance by dialing 112, even without a SIM card in the phone.

More information on these types of radios are available in our Satellite Phone Article.

Satellite Tracker/Messengers enable users to send a distress signal and GPS location to either authorities or designated emergency contacts, and offer optional online tracking services. They can now also be used as communication devices, with units offering the capability to send (and in some cases receive) text messages and emails via the satellite network. The customisation of these messages depends upon the device you are using, and charges will either be included in the device plan or purchased as a pre-paid bundle.

Satellite technology really enables us to "communicate" beyond the bounds of transmitting and receiving just voice data. Satellites transmit video, data and audio content so more satellite receiving devices are being developed all the time to deliver things such as broadband by satellite, high speed internet, satellite TV, video conferencing, multicasting, voice over internet protocol, and mobile broadband in both business and recreation. Mobile broadband is already achievable wherever you can drive a 4WD - essentially, you can now have any broadband related services at your fingertips simply by installing a small satellite receiver to your vehicle.

One of the major drivers of satellite technology is its' inherent strength as a broadcast medium. Safety alerts, regional information and other targetted messages could well be sent direct to drivers in their vehicles around the country via satellite multicasting. We can certainly expect to gain access to more reliable information when on the road through new services provided by either government or private services using multicasting in the future.

The internationally owned satellites that monitored the 121.5 MHz distress beacons have now been switched off and therefore, it is absolutely crucial that you upgrade to a digital 406 MHz distress beacon immediately - if you have not done so already.

406 MHz distress beacons save lives. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) that coordinates all aviation and maritime search and rescue across Australia’s 53 million square kilometre search and rescue region, no longer has the ability to detect an analogue 121.5 MHz distress beacon via satellite.

406 MHz beacons must be registered with AMSA. Registration is free and can be done on-line at the AMSA web site. When upgrading to a 406 MHz distress beacon it is essential that old analogue models are appropriately disabled and disposed of responsibly so that they do not trigger false alarms. More advice about distress beacons is available from the AMSA web site: www.amsa.gov.au/beacons or by calling 1800 406 406.