What kind of radio range can we expect?

[pkveazey]

Now that's a real can of worms. I get that question from non-radio people all the time. I'm a flat lander and the average terrain is 100 feet above sea level so I can do pretty well with VHF simplex. At the moment, I'm using a 25 watt QYT as a Base Station and the same thing in the Mobile. My antenna is a 9 db gain 5/8 wave over a 5/8 wave, 50 feet up and has low loss coax. Getting out about 10 to 15 miles from the house is usually not a problem. Those living in Rolly Polly land are going to get all sorts of different results. Trying to rate a radio in terms of using Repeaters is a whole other can of worms. How far away is the repeater, how high is the antenna on the repeater tower, is the repeater on a hill or mountain, etc. There are just too many variables. I remember that I once called the wife from the Courthouse which is 11 air miles away using my 5 watt HT and had no problem talking to my house. Yep, she's a Ham. The nearest UHF repeater is 16 miles away and is on top of a Water Tank and I can hit it with my rubber duck on my BaoFeng. I've had piss poor results using UHF simplex from the house to the Mobile. I think I'll have to give it another test sometime soon before the SHTF. I'm pretty sure that I should be able to do better than 2 miles with 15 watts from the Base to the 15 watt mobile when using UHF. Yep, I only get 15 watts out to the antenna when using UHF. Just for general info: My tri-Band will do about 27 watts on 2 meters, about 24 watts on 220, and about 12 to 15 watts on 440. Sorry but that's just the way it is.

[JohnyMac]

Yeah, with most frequency's it is all about height.

I have easily had simplex (Radio to radio no repeater) QSO's 60-miles away using a directional antenna and while on SSB. Yes, some 2-meter radios have a SSB (Single Sideband) mode.

One night using my directional antenna and in SSB mode, I had a nice QSO with a gentleman in Vermont on 2-meters. That was maybe 250-miles away. Interesting huh?

We have two repeaters in the area that sit on 2,500+ foot mountain tops. As PKv stated, using a repeater is a whole different animal. Depending on propagation there are a few repeaters around me that I can hold a QSO 100-miles away. Of course everybody and their brother can listen in. 

Last, height, height, height of the antenna makes the difference. One of the ladies in my MAG, about 4-miles away in town can hit me with no issues using a Baofeng radio. Why you may ask? Well put a home brew 1/4-wave ground plane antenna in her attic. If she didn't have the antenna in her attic she could hear me but could not TX to my antenna.

So, there you go. Clear as mud.

[Jackalope]

    Our MAG uses mostly TYT dual-band portable radios for comms.  We've found we can typically get 4-5 miles in most of our local terrain.  We have one MAG member located near our local club 2 meter repeater site, so he's well situated to cover most of the county.  Our plan is to use him to relay messages for our group.  We also plan to put either a simplex repeater or a cross band solar powered repeater at his location, to free him up from comm duties.  From his home he can easily cover 40-50 miles on simplex.

     I make up for my poor vhf/uhf location by using more transmit power, and by using high gain yagi antennas, 23 elements on uhf and 17 elements on vhf.  I The yagis work better than our omnidirectional, ground plane antennas, in one direction only.  Think laser versus Coleman lantern.

[FeedingFreedom]

If you need more range, go to a 6-meter or even 10-meter mobile. Our county used to use low-band VHF radios for fire communications, operating right around 33 MHz. The radios were expensive, and even the handheld antennas were approaching 2' long- not something you want hanging out of your turnout gear inside a structure fire! But it did work in our hilly terrain, and you should never kick a running horse, so that system remained for 30 years or more. They then transitioned to high-band VHF, which worked after a fashion with the addition of some more repeaters and remote receivers. Then in the early 2000's, the state decided to adopt an 800 MHz digital system for "Statewide Radio". They originally planned for 40+ sites in our county, which is laughable given our terrain. I did NOT make friends or fans when I pointed this out in a state EMA conference, but I was entirely correct. They ended up with over 100 sites, and the coverage is still not suitable for reliable emergency use. That and the project went tens of millions of dollars over-budget, and the radio company went belly-up soon after. Now they're replacing it with a P25 system, which has the exact same issues, but more available equipment. Luckily our county kept the VHF system and has even made a few improvements, so coverage is good.

My whole point in this diatribe is that there is no magic with radio, UHF and above is pretty much line-of-sight, so unless you live in an are that's so flat you can watch your dog run away for 2 weeks, you'll be limited in range to a few miles. Alinco still makes a 6-meter FM mobile, and there are lots of 10-meter mobiles available, most of which are multi-mode.

[Jackalope]

    In my case, we tried both 6 and 10 meters, and it was a no go.  In fact, there's a 6 meter FM repeater in my AO.  I can hit the repeater solid, the party I'm trying to reach couldn't even hear it.  So we've resorted to 75 meter NVIS, which does work, though not as reliably as we hoped.  We'll be trying VHF/UHF voice, once the remote station gets set-up (He just bought a house).

    Communicators need to be flexible, regarding frequency, mode, and even time of day.

[FeedingFreedom]

And 75 meters doesn't lend itself well to portable operation! I had good luck with 40 meters by putting a dipole 8' off the ground, I had a fair reach of 300+ miles under most conditions. I carry my QRP setup with a 40 meter wire on the EFHW, I can cover my AO easily, but can only transmit CW. The tradeoff is that the whole setup with 25' of small coax weighs very little and doesn't take up a lot of pack space. And the internal battery lasts several days of normal comms, with some SWLing thrown in for news and information.

[pkveazey]

Range pretty much depends on where you're at and what you are doing. If you remove propagation out of the equation, its a matter of experimenting with modes, locations, and frequencies. Many, many, many years ago I read an article in an Electronics magazine where a fellow was in Washington, DC. and compared 800 Mhz to 2 meters. They used a Taxi Cab. He expected the 2 meters to beat the crap out of 800 Mhz but got fooled because the 800 Mhz signal bounced off all the Steel and Concrete buildings and ricocheted up and down the side streets. If they had gone out in wide open countryside then the 2 meters would have been King. My best answer to range is, "Try everything and see what works best for you."