Joey wrote in news:dd64339h0kluu9d5kqu0tff6h9r6nmpbdl@
4ax.com:

Hi,
I'm trying to determine if I could use 10 meters to contact a station
about 75 miles away with about 2500ft elevation of a couple sets of
hills in between with just simple antennas on either end. Perhaps a
10m dipole on one end and some kind of stealthy one on the other. I
assume this would have to be ground wave only given the distance and
current band conditions.
My parents are both techs so we're currrently limited to parts of 10m
as the lowest band and I'd like to have something reliable without
need repeaters for disaster comms. We actually only have a few single
hop VHF/UHF repeaters between us, though quite a few linked ones.
I've also thought of 6m due to smaller antenna requirements, but I'm
pretty sure this is too far...
Thanks!


Joey,

You have given a lot of information, and yet too little.

The distance you nominate can be a challenge, yet routinely possible on
frequencies from 28MHz to 440MHz, depending....

My thoughts are that simplex contacts will be unlikely without effective
outside antennas, though not necessarily directional antennas, but they
would help.

You note you may have access to several repeaters, than can certainly
equalise bad locations or impossible paths (eg granite), but then you
might not want to conduct family chat on repeaters (though that is they
way they seem to have gone here since many of our new six hour hams with
their shack on their belt seem to be family members). An FM repeater in a
very good location may support contacts reliably out to 150+km for each
station, depending...

Another possibility might be using IRLP build a path.

To give you an example, I can work the 2m repeater at Mt Ginini
(exceptional site) from the car on my driveway here at Narooma, 155km (~
95mi) over mountains etc (but we don't have real mountains here do we?),
it would be easier with a 5dB gain omni on the house.

I could use a handheld to make the trip to a repeater 90km (~56mi) away
and use IRLP to anywhere in the world (if I liked IRLP). Then by
contrast, there would be places where you couldn't work a repeater 10km
away with a handheld.

So, it may be that a path via a VHF or UHF repeater might be more viable
than 10m.

Perhaps some experimentation is in order, that is what ham radio was
about once.

Owen