AusVarmint

In a previous life Kerriet did a bit of camping and 4wding and used uhfs in the high country and agreed with you blokes about the power needed in the hills.

So she wants me come back in one piece and sent me back to the shop

She's a good girl, does she think you need a new rifle and a new pack and new boots and new ...............................

So you're going to gift the little ones to me?

Much better, but....

In a previous job I was responsible for designing and constructing a wide area datalink over some very sexy uhf/vhf radios. Waterproof to 10m, frequency agile, full-on encryption, etc. With the help of a little communications card we could use them to connect multiple laptops in a meshed network and then transfer information over it. A bit like 802.11b, but slower, more encrypted and far more expensive.

Anyway, the key things I had reinforced to me time and again were
- even a 25w radio will be outperformed by a 5w radio with a better antenna.
- if you cannot see the other radio because of trees or hills, no matter how many watts you have UHF and VHF simply won't penetrate.
- more watts Tx = less time on battery

So, whilst the 5w unit will work much better than the 0.7w unit, if there is any serious tree foliage between the two of you - it won't really make much difference.

FWIW most UHF handhelds have crap antennas and there is not much you can do about that.

Unless you change it for a better antenna!
Although what you are saying about the trees may well be true i have found hills to be more of an issue than foliage.
Considering a good handheld 5w radio even without a better high gain antenna will travel through at least six or more floors of concrete i think if Trev is close enough to hear the hounds "voicing" he will be fine

Smart woman.
Different antenna (within reason) will make it better.
Go too high in the dB range and you sacrifice ability to get the signal over the hills, for a greater range in the flatter areas. 4.5 or 6 dB is a good start and will give good height and distance.

Is it just me or does anyone else think we are getting excited here, for Trevorts use anymore than a 3db would be painful. They should be fine

DSD wrote:Is it just me or does anyone else think we are getting excited here, for Trevorts use anymore than a 3db would be painful. They should be fine

Nah. Just you

Waldo wrote:She's a good girl, does she think you need a new rifle and a new pack and new boots and new ...............................

new pack and new camo jacket but there is fathers day and christmas

I thought you turned it on selected the channel and pressed a button to talk. all this stuff your making me think I need to read the destructions

Talking about radio's my wife runs a horse endurance ride in Burraga, we use the local bush fire brigade as the radio check points and even there radio's in their trucks can't maintain coms when there is lot's of foliage and hills.
Line of Sight means just that line of sight. I have a pair of 2W long range hand held's an they aren't bad so long as you don't have a hill in the way, range probably 2-3 Km's. I have talked to my wife on them with the aide of a repeater up to 20 - 30 Km's so if you can use one that is the best idea.
That being said there aren't that many around anymore.

Now I'm more confused,had my Father's Day pressy sorted.
Or so I though.
Big G

big G wrote:Now I'm more confused,had my Father's Day pressy sorted.
Or so I though.
Big G

Rhino 650 could be an option then, combined UHF and GPS. My brother and I have had a good run out of ours.

So what you need in the hills is a good HF radio.

I am not actually talking the big Codan and Barrett stuff.

Much more versatile (and cheaper and morefun) is Amateur Radio.

You could start here:
http://www.wia.org.au/licenses/foundation/about/ with about 10W

or end up here with 400W (up to 1000W under special circumstances)
http://www.wia.org.au/licenses/advanced/about/

Now if I can cram enough to breeze through the Advanced exam then I reckon most blokes here could do the same cram sessions and get there too.

Depending where you are the Amateur bands have numerous VHF and UHF repeaters, with surprising coverage - They have a fair bit of non-metro coverage due to their use for emergency comms (WICEN is the Amateur Radio emergency comms mob).

Rabz
VK2CSW
ex-Vk2FRBZ
ex-VK2VIS