Monday, Mar 08, 2010 at 12:19
Happy to help.
The reason I started down the track of HF communications is to start the ball rolling on safety communications.
This is about amateur radio:
One example of a radio is the one here:
Yaesu HF, VHF and UHF.
It won't give you the RFDS and the 4WD HF system but it will give you world wide coverage. It will also give you access to the amateur repeaters and satellites. Yearly licence is about $70. My wife just pays
mine. The radio in the example is smaller than some UHF CBs.
You would then need antennas and in some cases an antenna tuner. They can be a simple as a wire thrown over a tree. I have actually used a barbed wire fence to talk to an ex Aussie in Washington. I lowered the out put power to 1.5W and we still got through. Or you could get a vertical that has various settings for different bands of frequencies.
The main thing about amateur radio is that you have the licence so you can use whatever you want on the ham bands provided you stay within the regulations and specification of each service. That is a piece of cake with all these top radios around.
Now to 4WD HF
services.
There are a number of clubs and organisations that hold a class licence from ACA to assist 4WD followers with both emergency and casual communications. One such service is VKS:
VKS-737 Radio Network,
I do not know a lot about them so I hope someone will drop in and give you a brief.
To compare equipment for each system I shall stick to new estimates that I have heard. A good
HF radio for this 4WD HF system could cost up to $3000 including antenna and antenna tuner. Please anyone correct me. Compared to the Ham radio above at $1099 thats a bit expensive.
You can do cheaper for both systems.
I realise I mentioned equipment that you may not be familiar with but you would soon understand what they do and how you use them. Not complex as most of it can be automatic.
Hows that for the moment?
Phil
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