Long Range 2 Way Radios

These long range 2 way radios shown from different times and places are all capable of getting a signal out and heard for hundreds or even thousands of miles. Yet none of them is what you could call QRO or 'high power'.

It isn't high power that gets a signal out over a long distance, it's a matter of using the right band and the best time of day. Most of the 2 way radios on this page have a maximum of 100 Watts PEP from a single sideband signal. Some have much less than that.

You see, getting a radio signal to travel hundreds of miles or more works by bouncing your radio signal off the layers in the sky, so they are reflected back down to earth much further away. This is how HF (or short-wave) frequencies travel long distances to reach around the world.

Living as we do in the 21st century, most of us have telephones or cellphones to communicate. And these use old fashioned copper cables that are mostly underground (or under the sea). Some telephone and data circuits use fiber-optic cables underground or under the sea. While voice and data between continents can be routed via any of these paths... or it can be redirected through a communications satellite.

Satellites cost a lot of money to place and keep up there, so many small governments and business cannot afford to own any satellites. And some cannot even afford to pay to use them. So this is where HF radio, which uses the shortwave radio bands comes to the rescue.

The various HF bands have different characteristics. Some work well during the daytime and others work best during the hours of darkness. How far they can reach depends on whether it is day or night, and what condition the sky layers are in for radio propagation.

Normally radio conditions depend on a natural pheneononem called the Sunspot Cycle, which tends to swing slowly from good to bad over an 11-year cycle, (though some argue that it is a 22-year cycle). At the moment as I write this, in June 2009, radio propagation conditions are the worst they have been for decades. It doesn't mean long range 2 way radio communications doesn't happen. It just means you are going to have to try a whole lot harder to make successful contacts with anyone over long distances (making DX contacts).

In the Amateur Radio HF bands, the lower frequencies work best for close-in contacts. So bands such as 160m (1.8 MHz, or 'Top Band') is really only useful locally. But you need a truly gigantic antenna. A half-wave dipole at this frequency is 80 meters long, or about 270 feet. And, ideally, it is supposed to be that high up in the sky! Needless to say there are very few ham radio operators who operate this band, and even fewer of them have a full-sized antenna.

The Amateur 75m and 80m bands (3.5 to 4 MHz) are noisy during the day and good for a few hundred miles. At night time they are have less atmospheric noise and they get out a lot further. A thousand miles or more.

The Amateur 40m band (7.0 to 7.5 MHz) works pretty well both day and night. It is mostly a 'local' band covering a few hundred miles, but some DX contacts are possible. The part between 7.1 and 7.2 MHz was supposed to be cleared of broadcaster stations this year. But many broadcaster stations still use it, somewhat illegally, for their radio programs and propaganda.

The Amateur 30m band (10 MHz) is restricted to morse code and data in the USA. However Australian and New Zealand hams are permitted to use it for voice as well, so the SSB transmissions you hear from us there are quite legal.

The Amateur 20m band (14.0 to 14.5 MHz) has always been the Ham operator's favorite and most reliable DX band. When conditions are good, it hums with two way radio conversations all day and sometimes right into the night. Morse code (CW) transmissions are still a favorite here, since CW will still get through when voice (SSB) can't be understood. Though not all hams these days know the morse code anymore, since it is no longer a requirement to get your ham license.

The other Amateur bands between 20m and 10m are pretty useless at the moment, which is why 27 MHz CBers, who are on the 11m band, (but probably don't know that!), will not be having much joy if they try to make long distance contacts on the air. Fellas, it isn't you, it isn't your radios or your antennas, it is the lousy atmospherics we have at the moment. And adding a 'kicker' (an illegal CB radio amplifier) won't do you any good at all. It will just cause splatter to everyone near to you, and likely it will get you caught and fined by the FCC.

Wait a few years until the sunspots come back, and simple little low-powered SSB CB radios will be talking long distance again, just like gangbusters.

There is more info on the subject here: long-range 2-way radios.