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Canada | Whats the difference between uhf/vhf radios ,which are best for a farming operation in a mobile radio Tia |
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West Union, Illinois | The answer to what is best will depend on your use. What do you want to accomplish, how far do you want to talk, terrain you are in, budget, etc.
The system I have is VHF simplex. We can talk mobile to mobile 5 miles all the time, sometimes up to 15. It is me, my son in law, and a friend occasionally helping. We carry cell phones and have acceptable service most of the time.
A friend's business involves 3 office staff, 2 service men, up to 5 delivery drivers and 2 transport drivers covering all or parts of 6 counties. He has UHF trunking radios and rents use of a commercial radio system. Because he is handling a hazardous material any of his people have to be able to reach the office as well as anyone else at any time and everyone can hear what is happening.
My system is best for me. His is best for him. There are other ways of doing it. So in order to answer your question you are going to have to tell us more about you and your use.
Edit: I side stepped the first question. The simple answer is the frequency used. While being honest, it does not really answer what you want to know. Let's start radio class ...
Typically VHF radios will be talking directly to each other (simplex).
UHF radios will talk to each other through a repeater (duplex ... technically half duplex but that's getting too deep too fast). You may own your own repeater, use a community repeater where everyone can hear everyone else,
or a trunking system where you don't hear anyone but your people and nobody else hears you. You can talk long distances if the system is in place.
images from http://bsar.org/manual/communications
Edited by Mike SE IL 8/5/2014 23:25
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| the 150 mhz will travel thru more trees then the 450 will
very hard to get "business band " repeaters on the 150 |
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Fulton County Ohio | Rules and performance of vhf have changed. Band width has been reduced. There was a time 20 mile mobile to mobile and 35 mile mobile to base was common. The tuned down systems are great for combine to grain cart communication when you do not have time to dial a phone. Cell phones cover the longer distance needs. The system can be set so you do not hear others who may be on your frequency. Previously over powered systems could be heard from an extended distance. It made for interesting listening. The same system that would communicate 20 miles will not work one mile if there is an obstruction in the way (raised highway, hill, etc.). Cell performance has increased. VHF performance has decreased. UHF should still be good, but comes with a price tag. |
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West Central IL | With narrowband opening up more available freqs you can get a VHF repeater pretty easily at least in our area. Local school district has a new one and the townships in the north half of our county went together and got a new VHF repeater also. |
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NE Alberta | Previous posts all have good info, but I might add:
-We use UHF without any trunking and it is fine for the distances we need. It is MORE line-of-sight than VHF so will bend over hills less. In our hilly terrain we barely get 5 miles reliably, and 10 miles in perfect terrain. If your base antenna is high you will be able to reach much farther with it than mobile to mobile.
-When we got ours years ago (in Canada, in our area), if you got VHF you would almost certainly have had to share your frequency with other users, while with UHF you normally did not share.
-While with todays equipment it may be less a factor, UHF was thought of as being less susceptible to interference and other degrading factors (overall more reliable within it's shorter range than VHF). That is why many essential services (ambulance and police) use UHF with trunking (with the high towers you get long range, reliable operation).
-UHF radios are sometimes slightly more expensive.
-UHF radios us shorter antennas, and if you use antennas that require a ground plane, the ground plane required is much smaller.
You may want to check on what frequencies are available in your area before making a decision. |
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West Central, IA | VHF is generally better but will interfere with GPS signal also. We had to switch to UHF to keep from having GPS issues, it interferes with the Hamonics of the GPS. |
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Eastern VA. No such thing as too many Magnums. | We use 450 range for talking, and 150 for RTK data. We have our own repeater for talking, but it isn't very high up. The talk radios hit the repeater for normal stuff in our neighborhood, but we can use channel 2 if two machines are out of town, but still close enough to each other to do simplex. If I had to start from scratch, I would do VHF for talk too. They didn't offer repeaters for VHF back when we started, but they do now. You may not need a repeater if everything is close by, and flat. |
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| The new "narrow band" digital VHF radios don't give the problems with GPS systems like the old "wide band" radios did. Or at least ours don't.
I've had VHF radios since 1985. I haven't seen a reduction in talking range with the new "narrow band" radios that the FCC mandated a couple years ago. Actually have seen an increase in the range between "mobile" units. Usually have no problems reaching out 15-20 miles mobile to mobile. Range for hand helds usually are around a mile or so , about what they were previously. As for "tone squelch", nothing new, I've had it in my radios since I first went to the VHF. VHF signal will follow the curvature of the earth while UHF is straight line. That's why a UHF usually requires a repeater to get any range |
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Uhf/vhf radios which are better
