In message , Tim Wescott
writes
On Tue, 28 Jul 2009 08:38:57 -0700, wrote:
im an EE, but have never gotten into ham radio. Now, I have a reason! Im
going off roading in the california desert, and I'd like to be able to
communicate back home in San Diego. What band and equipment would be the
best (for both base and mobile) in order to communicate reliably during
the day? Or is this unreasonable?
Someone will disagree, and we'll both learn something...
For getting through with just your equipment probably HF; on a truck it's
probably best to count on 20m, although at that distance 80m is
inherently 'better' for ground-wave daytime local-ish communication.
For getting through all the time, and assuming there's coverage, a
repeater. It won't get you all the way home unless there's a phone patch
available or an intertie. Since repeater clubs have widely varying
policies regarding furreners using their equipment, and the most common
arrangement is that anyone can use the repeater but only club members get
the magic finger ring combination to open the patch or the intertie you
may want to do some research.
For getting through all the time, with cost and effort rivaled by buying
a second rig to tow behind your main rig just so you can drive home, you
could set up for satellite operation. I'm not recommending this unless
you just plain want to have fun with it, but there you are.
Note that _all_ of these options except for the phone patch require that
you have someone with an amateur license and a matching radio on the
other end.
In the height of summer, in daytime, a maximum of around 300 miles would
be normal for 80m, but I think you'll be lucky reliably to get 500
miles. In fact, apart from very local stations, you could find 80m
totally dead between 11am and 2pm. Depending on ground conductivity,
groundwave goes out to around 20 miles before skywave really takes over.
If the sunspots on the sun had been a bit more active, and conditions on
40m had been 'normal', this band would have been a the definite
'general-purpose' choice. Groundwave is noticeably less than on 80m.
Typical communication range is 50 to 500+ miles.
On 20m, 100 miles is a bit close. You're unlikely to get reliable
communication at less than 250 or 300 miles. Groundwave is even less
than 40 - maybe only 5 miles.
--
Ian