Possible distance for HT

[Muzic2Me]

Put up a temporary antenna to test the waters on seeing how the 5watt HT might hear out. Pretty sturdy, but not permanent.Wanted to get an idea for when I install my permanent mast. Waiting on my mobile with a little more wattage. I’m in the coverage of a local repeater 20 miles away and was hoping to catch some traffic. Any ideas on range. 20’ high antenna height.

[MichaelLAX]

Just now, Muzic2Me said:

I look at towers daily. That will be on the bucket list. I’m surrounded by 60’ oaks. Love the privacy, but causes issues in this field of radio.

HT range booster! 

[Muzic2Me]

4 minutes ago, MichaelLAX said:

HT range booster! 

Good one!!!  

[kidphc]

Owner of this place will answer your questions adn likely have it in stock. Recommend calling instead of using online ordering. He's a Ham who has been doing this for over 40years. Loves to do UHF/VHF simplex. Think he is doing microwave work now adays. Wealth of information.

https://rfconnection.com/

lInk to coax https://rfconnection.com/belden-9913f7-cable/coaxial-cable/

Has everything you need. It is like the bat cave of ham, I mean tubes, switches almost everything. Some of the stuff has thinned out due to the inability to attend Hamventions but you ask he probably has it lying around.

[MichaelLAX]

1 hour ago, Muzic2Me said:

Good one!!!  

In the summer of 2002, I took a 6 week drive of the 8 Western States.

I promised myself, if I did not rent a motel room during the trip (either stay with family or camp out), I could buy a brand new-fangled Sirius Satellite Receiver (just going "hot" on the West Coast in one week and preferred by me at that time over XM, because they carried Public Broadcasting [PBS]).

I brought my Mac Powerbook, my Nokia cellphone, a serial cable to connect the two, an Olympus digital camera with USB cable, an 18" DirecTV dish with collapsable PVC stand, a DirecTV receiver, a video to USB converter so I could watch DirecTV on my Powerbook and of course my Kenwood TH-22at. (You can take the Boy out of the City, but you can't take the City out of the Boy!)

I would "blog" to family and friends about the trip every night by sending out an email with photos attached.

One series of ongoing emails bemoaned the fact that the enormous Redwoods of Northern coastal California would impede my ability to receive Sirius satellite radio broadcasts and that I needed to pickup a chainsaw to improve reception.

My sister-in-law with no sense of humor, consistently criticized my insensitivity to the Redwoods! 

Here I am watching the Dodgers vs. Cubs at the Chief Timothy State Park in Idaho, next to the Snake River.  I would invite the nearest camper to come watch the game and they would always bring an extra brew and even invite me for their campout dinner:

 

[Muzic2Me]

On 1/11/2022 at 5:38 PM, Lscott said:

A quick estimate is take the square root of the antenna height in feet and multiply by 1.4 to get the line-on-sight distance to the radio horizon in miles. In your case that works out to about 6.3 miles.

If you assume the other station is an HT held at 5 feet it’s distance to the radio horizon is about 3.1 miles.

With trees and other obstructions between the two radios your real range might be a lot less.

Through experiments your assumption is correct. I cant connect with a 50 watt base station to a HT on the car with an external antenna over a mile away. Taking the technician exam tomm. So i am hoping the 2 meter band with of course another radio and Antenna may help with the distance issue.

[marcspaz]

27 minutes ago, Muzic2Me said:

So i am hoping the 2 meter band with of course another radio and Antenna may help with the distance issue.

 

I wouldn't expect any miracles on 2m. LOS is LOS. Using power to overcome shadowing is a high-loss game.  I'll be impressed if you pick-up an extra 0.5-1 miles.

 

My own personal experience, watt for watt and all else equal, I don't get an extra block in my neighborhood, moving from GMRS or Amateur 440 to 2m.

[WROZ250]

On 1/11/2022 at 4:28 PM, Muzic2Me said:

Put up a temporary antenna to test the waters on seeing how the 5watt HT might hear out. Pretty sturdy, but not permanent.Wanted to get an idea for when I install my permanent mast. Waiting on my mobile with a little more wattage. I’m in the coverage of a local repeater 20 miles away and was hoping to catch some traffic. Any ideas on range. 20’ high antenna height.

Is that an Ed Fong Antenna?

 

[WROZ250]

On 1/14/2022 at 6:40 AM, Muzic2Me said:

I look at towers daily. That will be on the bucket list. I’m surrounded by 60’ oaks. Love the privacy, but causes issues in this field of radio.

I was just looking into the cost of putting up a relatively small, self supporting, tower and was shocked to discover that the concrete (and labor) for the just base will be nearly twice the cost of the tower itself!

It's still on the to-do list, but is going to have to wait for the additional funding.

And I thought the difficult part was going to be the permits!

[MichaelLAX]

12 hours ago, Muzic2Me said:

Through experiments your assumption is correct. I cant connect with a 50 watt base station to a HT on the car with an external antenna over a mile away. Taking the technician exam tomm. So i am hoping the 2 meter band with of course another radio and Antenna may help with the distance issue.

Good luck on the Tech exam. 

@WROA675 and I have conducted experiments and 2 meters has almost always shown greater reception for 2 meters over 70cms/GMRS. 

Answering @marcspaz’s concern, I do not believe that any of my experiments involved attempting to hear on VHF a station that I could not receive on UHF. 

So I look forward to your results. 

[AdmiralCochrane]

My experience with 2 meter vs 65&70cm is that UHF can work better where knife edge refraction and reflection help UHF propagation and the terrain otherwise inhibits VHF, outside of that exception, VHF is generally superior. 

My greatest distance using 2m simplex has been approximately 11 miles in the lumpy hills valleys dips and ridges of central Maryland. I echo MichaelLAX that there is no reason to think same would not have happened on UHF.

[marcspaz]

My farthest 2m contact was with someone else's gear. I was on Flagpole Knob (about 4,000' ASL) with the Woodbridge Wireless radio club for Field Day about 20 years ago. Stacked beam array, 1500w on 144.2 MHz USB.  Talked from Dayton, VA to just over 1,000 miles to an operator just south of Dallas TX.  That was pretty awesome.