Back in the 80’s I received my first amateur radio license, a ‘B’ license as it was back then entitling me to use, if I recall correctly, bands above 30 MHz only. We didn’t have 6m and 4m band allocations then so it meant 2m and 70cms were the bands of choice for me and the majority of other ‘B’ license holders.
So I started with 2m and 70cms SSB and my interest was soon peeked by space communications with Oscar 10 etc. Those early Oscar’s were excellent as, if I recall correctly, they where in elliptical orbits which meant that they appeared to hang in the sky for some time, not shooting overhead as do satellites in lower more circular orbits. Their transponders were just like big SSB repeaters in the sky and I worked all over Europe. Happy days. But working those Oscars was not that easy especially at Acquisition of Satellite (AOS) as they were pretty far from the Earth so a good station was needed. My station grew to a 2m, 9 element crossed Yagi; a 70cms, 19 element crossed Yagi, both circularly polarised; azimuth plus elevation rotators and mast head preamplifiers. The radio was a Yaesu FT-736 which I only sold last year…It was a wonderful radio.
Of course with those antenna’s it was perfectly possible to work terrestrial communications too. I made contacts across the UK and Europe using sporadic E and Tropospheric propagation. Those were exciting times indeed as not only was amateur radio new, to me, but it was such fun learning about different types of propagation, satellite communications and having great fun talking to people.
Ok, so by now some of you will be asking – what is the point of this article? Well, bear with me… I learnt Morse code and in the early 90’s received my ‘A’ license. Soon afterwards the world changed as I started doing radio professionally for a few years. This removed all interest to do amateur radio stuff when I got home from work. Anyhow, time passed and I started to operate on HF talking to people all over the world – it was fascinating – I learn’t lots more.
With solar cycle 24 rapidly fading and with the real possibility that cycle 25 may be no better, probably worse, I’ve been looking back and found myself comparing my V/UHF experiences with those of HF.
My conclusion is that HF is fun, its pretty easy to work stations across the UK, Europe and further afield depending on your station. Take a minute and think about that, especially the ‘depending on your station’ bit. Do you have the space to erect, for example, a 9 element Yagi for the 20m band? I’m seriously impressed if you do 😉 I bet most of us are using simple HF antenna’s and we are constrained by space, interference and the cost of erecting a high-performance HF station. But move on up to VHF and things get so much easier. I bet many of us could erect a 9 element Yagi for the 2m band and mount it several wavelengths above ground too…. Such an antenna will cost a tiny fraction of its HF equivalent; its small, light and easily rotated too. Interference does certainly exist above HF but its nowhere near as bad. But, FM repeaters and modes such as D-Star aside, VHF is dead these days I hear you say? I cannot deny that it is much quieter than in the 80’s and 90’s but its still a happening place… Its perfectly possible to work stations using phone and data modes across the UK and into Europe when propagation is flat. All those exotic data modes are present and in active use too, people are exploiting Tropospheric propagation, meteor scatter, satellite communications, auroral propagation to name a few.
So its back to the future for me, the HF antenna is now down and until I receive my new VHF antenna I’ve elevated one of my original 9 element Yagi’s. Already I’m hearing beacons GB3ANG in Scotland, GB3VHF in Kent and GB3SSS in Cornwall. I even worked an old friend towards London using CW (RST:559) and Olivia with 20 watts. Who says VHF is line-of-sight. 🙂
I guess you realise the message by now…. V/UHF is lots of fun, you can work DX, high-performance stations are much more achievable than on HF and you learn lots. Amateur radio is so much more than HF, FM, repeaters, D-Star etc. So, why not explore our higher bands?
Andrew
G0RVM
