The area I now live has no cell reception and is very mountainous. I'm looking for a way for my wife and I to keep in touch, up to maybe 50 miles away, but primarily within 20 miles, not line of sight.

We've been using the CB portable radios that claim 40 miles, but they fall pretty short with mountains in the way. It would also be handy to have the ability to get a signal out of the Bob Marshal or Frank Church in the event we needed assistance, but not enough to push the panic button on the PLB.

I've been looking at handheld, 5 watt V/UHF transceivers, but simply don't know enough about them to know whether they'll work for what I want. Here's an example: https://www.hamradio.com/detail.cfm?pid=H0-015655

Near as I can tell there's a repeater (146.7200) about 40 miles from us, but nothing in the local area. Communication would have to be unit to unit.

Anyone with expertise on these? I searched, but the last thread was from 2014 and seemed to deal mostly with AK.

Thanks!

Our new front yard:

Depending on propagation conditions and signal path you can hit a VHF repeater at that distance. I've done it for years providing the repeater is tuned up and sensitive to signal input. Best done with power and a multi-element yagi directional antenna. Base amateur transceivers with 25-50 watts work best, same for long high gain antennas. Repeaters come and go depending on their source of electrical power and if weather disables or destroys them.

But it does take others to respond to your calls...same for low power hand-held radios. Not sure what you have for neighbors with similar equipment.

Today satellite phones or sat dish/PC links have mostly replaced ham radio if you want dependable coms. They are somewhat expensive but if you need to stay in touch then ...

Gary NL7Y

PA1195 wrote:Depending on propagation conditions and signal path you can hit a VHF repeater at that distance. I've done it for years providing the repeater is tuned up and sensitive to signal input. Best done with power and a multi-element yagi directional antenna. Base amateur transceivers with 25-50 watts work best, same for long high gain antennas. Repeaters come and go depending on their source of electrical power and if weather disables or destroys them.

But it does take others to respond to your calls...same for low power hand-held radios. Not sure what you have for neighbors with similar equipment.

Today satellite phones or sat dish/PC links have mostly replaced ham radio if you want dependable coms. They are somewhat expensive but if you need to stay in touch then ...

Gary NL7Y

Thanks! Without a repeater, do you believe a 5 watt handheld will reach another 5 watt handheld in a 10~20 mile range, not line of sight? A sat phone (well, two sat phones) really isn't practical for us, given the cost.

And I get what you're saying about needing someone on the other end...I'm not sure if that's a reality around here or not.

VHF radios are line of sight for the majority of time, especially at low power. There can be signal bending called knife edge propagation over terrain peaks and ridges but it's not dependable. The repeater would be your best chance for coms providing it can be accessed when you need to. Weather can degrade signals and shut down the equipment however.

Another option may be HF ham radio at lower frequencies like the 75/80, 40, or sometimes 20 meter amateur bands. It takes a NVIS (near vertical up and down propagation from the proper antenna design) for close in contacts over mountainous terrain and it depends on favorable stuff in the ionosphere and time of day to make it happen. It also takes others to com with.

I'll be blunt... you can afford a sat phone or text messaging equipment if you want dependable 2-way communications and health and welfare are a concern. Over the years in Alaska I've had amateur HF and VHF, cell, and sat radios at a remote camp 90 miles west of town. The only guarantee is the sat phone or perhaps text messaging via the SPOT (https://www.findmespot.com/en/) or Garmin inReach (http://info.delorme.com) text messaging/emergency radios.

Edit: I didn't want to seem rude earlier...but if you can post here how do you do that from a presumably remote location? Can't you contact others via that means?

Gary

Thanks for the information! I have a spot and a plb in the airplane, it's really keeping in touch when I'm fishing and she's hiking, or when I'm at the house and she's out on a mountain bike ride that I'm trying to sew up. Convenience and peace of mind more than emergency communication.

Too bad I can't poach on the FS network...they have repeaters all over the place around here. I suppose if I wanted to get crazy I'd put my own repeater up somewhere...have to check the cost.

Dependable non line of sight coms up to 20-50 miles is why the FS and other Gov't agencies install repeaters. If there were another cheap reliable way to communicate they would use it...and that's now why sat phones are popular in areas where repeaters are unavailable or undependable.

You could set up your own amateur radio repeater providing you had an elevated sight and power. You could try other options like these (https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/pe ... ping-touch) but as you note none are a guarantee over terrain or distance especially when a broken limb occurs or bear is about to eat you (or already has started the feast).

I guess I've offered all I can. Short of a PLB I'm not sure what I'd do in your expected conditions.

Gary

Sat phone or inreach.

Hammer wrote:
Anyone with expertise on these? I searched, but the last thread was from 2014 and seemed to deal mostly with AK.

Thanks!

Our new front yard:

In that terrain, with two hand held 5 watt VHF radios, you'd be lucky to get 5 miles, probably less. Maybe 20 if you used something like a 25 watt mobile unit in a car with a rooftop antenna.

You could set up a simplex repeater pretty easily if you had access to a high spot with power, something like this:
https://tinyurl.com/ycs55v6o
All you would need a a third handheld into a rooftop antenna. It you could get it up a couple of hundred feet, you should be reliable out to 50 miles or so on each side of the link.
Pete N1AGV

Troy Hamon wrote:Sat phone or inreach.

Not a fan of sat phones but I think the InReach is awesome for communication when you don't need to be in constant communication. Just a quick text message to the wife is easier than being in touch all the time too. Cheap plans you can change online for usage, GPS and hooks up to your phone, easy to use and extremely reliable.

Will one of you be talking from out and about to the other person who is at home? It looks like your house may be elevated above the average terrain. That is good. If that is the case I would set up a base station at your house with a good antenna. Each of your vehicles could be set up with something like this https://www.hamradio.com/detail.cfm?pid=H0-008951 with cross-band repeat capability http://www.qsl.net/wb3gck/cbr.htm. Then you could transmit from your handheld to your vehicle with a cross-band repeater setup which would then re-transmit out with much higher power and a better antenna. It won't work everywhere but you might be surprised where it will work. You will likely find that while you may not have good communication on your entire route, certain locations along your route may have excellent communication and those locations can be used as checkpoints. There are handhelds with APRS built in https://www.hamradio.com/detail.cfm?pid=H0-010366 as well.

Your local club http://www.w7ftx.org/ probably has plenty of "Hams" that would love to help you figure this all out.

InReach. Small, lightweight, Bluetooth it to your cell and reliable worldwide on Irridium network. $200/device and the enterprise plans are very flexible depending on how much you use it, $30-50/mo. Also, can be used for flight tracking down to 1min intervals. SOS function too.

Why spend the money on some sort of clunky radio setup that can only be used right around your house when you can clip an InReach on your handlebars, backpack, dashboard, glareshield and have concise and reliable communication anywhere? Unless you really want to hear your significant others voice.

The InReach is a good device, no doubt. I'd consider getting one InReach and one Iridium based Satellite Phone. Many of the satellite phone plans permit texts at no charge. So, you could leave the Sat Phone with one person, InReach with the other, and easy comm. In a pinch, you've always got the sat phone if you really need voice comm with the outside.

Trying to use HF, or VHF/UHF comm in that kind of country, you'll likely wind up with marginal or spotty comm, and wind up spending more money than if you'd just bought two sat phones......and you'd still have a clunky, and marginally useful system, that you can't take with you anywhere else.

MTV

I'll assume that you have a ham radio licence.

I have a cabin 110-miles south of home, virtually in the middle of nowhere. No cell service, of course. Too far for VHF, obviously.

For coms we have used HF radio in the past. That's fun, but not entirely reliable (5 MHz and NVIS antenna seems to work best over that distance).

Now, for casual coms we use the InReach. More urgent coms, we use the sat 'phone. This seems to work best, but I still keep the ham radio if only for the "fun factor".

Whatever method you choose, have a back-up. My choice would be InReach and sat 'phone.

You could have satellite internet and e-mail. Then you have reliable coms and entertainment all in one!

VY0AW

Interesting input from everyone...thanks.

While a couple sat phones would be ideal, we really don't want/need to spend that kind of money right now. Even when we had cell reception it was unusual for us to make or receive a half dozen calls in a month. I rarely even knew where mine was.

Inreach is interesting, but I don't see how you can use it effectively without paring it to a smartphone. If there's a built in keyboard, they don't advertise it. Our phones have buttons and don't pare with anything other than vintage 90's clothing, and I can guarantee that neither of us is going to cary or tend to two devices.

So can you easily communicate with an Inreach without it pared to anything else? How?

What I'm really trying to nail down is the "back yard" where we spend a lot of our time, and where there is no communication. Pretty common for my wife to go on a three hour hike or bike ride while I'm working on the house, and it'd be nice to keep in touch. Ditto with most of our airplane camping...I want to fish or look for game, and she wants to hike. We're in the same general area, but out of communication.

My professional life was tied to radio communication, so it's what I'm used to. I still have that reoccurring nightmare that I left my radio off and don't know what traffic I missed. While it might be the clunkiest form of communication, it's sure the most intuitive. It's also pretty uncommon for us to need or want to communicate with anyone but each other. A sat phone is infinitely more versatile and reliable, but it's a bit of overkill for what we need 99% of the time.

Putting up my own repeater might not be as dumb an idea as I first thought. The house is 500 feet off the valley floor, and with a solar panel and a battery I could put one on any number of high points that are rarely if ever visited by folks. I guess the first step would be to get a couple 5 watt radios and see what the range is, then see how much I need to boost it.

Thanks again for all the good information!

You can communicate directly from the inreach Hammer, it just has a keypad that you scroll through to type your text or email. It is a bit of a pain in the ass that way though, but by the sounds of it it's probably similar to testing from your old phone, haha. Very user friendly with a cheap simple phone that you can bluetooth to though. Battery lasts forever as well great for biking or hiking but yeah it is a bit frustrating scrolling through the alphabet if you don't hook it up to a phone.

Hammer wrote:What I'm really trying to nail down is the "back yard" where we spend a lot of our time, and where there is no communication. Pretty common for my wife to go on a three hour hike or bike ride while I'm working on the house, and it'd be nice to keep in touch. Ditto with most of our airplane camping...I want to fish or look for game, and she wants to hike. We're in the same general area, but out of communication.

Yes, I see your problem now. Unfortunately, a "three hour bike ride" puts you beyond the range of a handheld VHF radio. You're in that never-land - too far for VHF and too close to spend a lot of money.

Hmmm ....these are indeed weighty problems (Newman, 1997). Nevertheless ...

I think the expense of establishing and maintaining a traditional repeater would exceed the cost of a couple of sat-phones. Mind you, there would be no on-going charges, so that's a plus.

Some of the newer hand-held radios are capable of becoming a "simplex repeater". In other words it stores the received voice message and then re-transmits it. There is a delay, of course - annoying but not a deal-breaker. A handheld like that and a small battery in a weather-proof enclosure, a solar panel and a simple antenna and you're in business. It could all be built small and light enough to back-pack up one of your local hills.

Would vandalism be a problem in your area? Something to consider.

Actually, this device can be used with any handheld VHF/UHF radio:

Description: A simplex repeater records incoming transmissions and retransmits them on the same frequency. This has the effect of doubling the time required to transmit a message, but while a traditional repeater typically costs thousands of dollars and might be semi-portable at best, a simplex repeater can be set up with a single handheld radio and operated from batteries. This makes it perfect for disaster response, home or campground use, and any place where radio range needs to be extended but the cost and complexity of a traditional repeater can’t be justified. Additionally, the unique ‘say again’ repeat-on-demand feature of the ADS-SR1 allows it to be operated in silent mode, repeating transmissions only when requested. This can be used to repeat a missed transmission or to check for missed calls, even hours or days after the last transmission was heard by the repeater.
Product is in production.
More info: http://https://www.argentdata.com/catal ... ucts_id=98


Edit: that link doesn't seem to work. Edit: Okay, it worked the second time I tried it.

Better link for the simplex repeater: https://www.argentdata.com/catalog/inde ... iz5hiB5983

Installed in conjunction with a base radio with horsepower and an antenna that has a commanding view of the area it might work as advertised.

Gary

The repeater idea might work out pretty well. Three handhelds and a repeater still cost a lot less than one sat phone, plus no subscription.

Inreach looks like a great unit, but texting with a keypad is a deal killer, and I'm just not going to buy and cary a phone around to compliment it.

There are hundreds of high points around here that could work...the house itself might work. Very little human traffic around here, and virtually no traffic away from the logging roads. The area behind and above us burned many years ago and it's a pixy-sticked with down timber, making cross country travel absurdly arduous.

I have been repurposing some of the elk trails into passible fatbike trails, at least while going downhill...



Thanks for all the help!

My latest Old Far-Seeing-Art idea is a drone coupled to simplex repeater or dual crossband transceiver. Launch the bird and with up to 400' gain in elevation make a contact. Example: http://www.jpole-antenna.com/2014/05/01 ... operation/

Back to regular programming.

Gary