What sort of distance have you received on your uhf radios.

My best effort, without a repeater station, is over 80 Kms. We arrived at Kings Canyon to find that there was no firewood so I treked back out past the NP limits to collect it. This was an 80+ km journey and while collecting I could hear the office staff talking to the cleaners via hand helds. This was using a GME TX3400 with a AE409L antenna using the -6dB whip.

Hi Daza,

I quite often pick up people talking on the UHF from Kadina... Not Roachie though, i think the main bloke i hear is called John

Cheers, Brad

HI Daza,

UHF / VHF can sometimes be heard over very long distances, its caused by a condition caused "ducting" where signals get piped between layers of different tempratures in the upper atmosphere.

As an example I was in contact with a station in Yepoon QLD from my home in Melbourne a few weeks ago. And we regularly hear stations fom Tasmania on our 'Ham Radio" repeaters in Melbourne.

A few months ago a Station in South Australia made a contact with a Station In New Zealand.

So given the right conditions you can have quite long range contacts on VHF and UHF radio.

Best 73 John VK3ARK

Normally any radio frequency transmission above about 30MHz is “line of sight” only. That means exactly what it says; so if you are on a mountain top your transmission will have a long distance (maybe 200km?) but if you are in a valley in may be as short as 1km?

However… there is a phenomenon called “tropospheric ducting” which occurs under certain ionosphere conditions (when the planet get a bit bored :) and will carry VHF/UHF signals for thousands of kilometers. This is a totally unpredictable condition and may only last a few minutes.

Mike Harding

It's interesting what can happen sometimes. Maybe it's just a freaky thing.

I've had 120k on UHF but over water up the coast north of Perth.

Also, in the good old days of analogue mobile phones I was on the beach at Two Rocks (north of Perth) and rang home (Perth). When I got the bill it showed that I got thru via Busselton. Directly over the water that is 240k's from my phone to the antenna at Busselton.

Now let's talk about the range of Next G. lol.

How about from Mars to Earth- and about the same power as your car transciever...

I have my UHF antenna mounted in the middle of the roof on the Jack. Inconvenient at times especially in underground carparks etc but I get good range with it, in flat country I average around 80km over water I have had unbelievable range, Weipa to Karumba...
I enjoy listening to the absolute drivel that not even I can better
"looks like theres a river under the bridge up ahead George" "better check it out Ron".....
What I want to hear "there are 3 lots of casual skirt in front Fawlty" " rightoh mate lets dump the handbrakes & check them out"

While serving in my units Command Post in Sth. Vietnam in 1970. I could hear these very 'English' voices over one of our VHF sets. It turned out to be a British Infantry unit on exercises in the hills out of Hong Kong. We had very clear contact for only about five minutes, then they just faded away. Was exciting at the time.

We always called it "skipping" as the radio waves skipped off the atmosphere, or air, or something.

When I was in W.Qld, we used to regularly get 100Km on simplex, mobile to base.

Mobile sets were Sawtron 999s with 9db fibreglass whips, base was a Sawtron 990 with a 12db on a 20 metre high mast.

Daza,
That bloke south of Tenterfield may have been punching out more than 5W also.

best we have done on simplex was tasmania from southern Victoria, on duplex from warrnambool to just to the east of geelong

nick

Regularly travel between Broken Hill and Nyngan. Have had many clear conversations with other users on the Dukes Hwy, Horsham, Stawell etc. Must admit though mostly at night. Use 6db roof mounted and Ch 40. Distance - as crow flies - about 600 km

Daza,

The Ch 7 repeater is up on MT Glorious. It picks up the ch37 signals from a fair way out and rebroadcasts out over ch7. its the repeater that has the range not our uhf's.. although his would be pretty strong or great line of sight to hit the repeater from that far out. ( sorry if you already know how duplex works)
I didn't understand how duplex works at first..... I thought I had great range until the repeater was off one day... then I only hit about 10-15ks around otherwise

The ch7 repeater at Mt Glorious is one of the highest repeaters in aus let alone qld. It gets some pretty amazing range. The bloke who owns the ch7 license (a truck driver) is usually on early in the mornings with his mates before all the riff raff wake up and start their usual bollocks. the ch7 repeater has directional antennas pointed away from ipswich because there is a lot of dribble from that way.

The most range i've managed was 22klm car to car (verified with gps) with 2x 400pro's & rfi antennas on fraser island's eastern beach. From the home base with my 16element beam it was about 120klm without a repeater. I've been up Mt glorious and i can tell you that every single simplex channel and every cb in south east qld comes in strong :) It's very high ;)