For ham usage... 2m? 70cm? which is best?

[Jonathan KC8RYW]

Maybe I'll find a job someday where I can make enough (without getting arrested ) so I can comfortably buy an Astro Saber.

And when that day comes, what band Astro Saber should I get?

From my observations, 70cm seems to be less crowded and has more bandwidth then 2m does. Also, I seem to think more public service agencies and federal government agencies use UHF over VHF, which should assure a strong supply on the used market in the years to come (this is important for hams). Of course, if we had ham spectrum in 800MHz, we would have an even bigger supply! Also, you have to love the Public Safety Speaker/Mic/Antenna.

On the down side: coax loss is annoying at 70cm. That may not be much of an argument, though. I dunno.

While it's on my mind, I think it'd be beyond helpful to give an APCO-25 demo from us at Batboard at Dayton 2003. We could show and educate other hams at Dayton that APCO25 in the ham band <b>IS</b> possiable. I think the folks at Tucson Amateur Packet Radio would be a good group to work with. I've seen a lot of pro-APCO25 content on their website.

Count me in for APCO25 in the ham bands.... I talk the talk now, and someday I'll walk the walk, too.

73

[wiliki46]

Buy the band that suits you the best. As a ham you will know what band suits you where you live. I live on Oahu in Hawaii. While we do have concrete jungles, Oahu is mostly mountains and hills. Great VHF land, if not low band land. So buy what band will suit you best. If you got lots of built up areas that you will be around go UHF. Hope this helps in your decision.

[alex]

I would base my decision on what I was going to listen to and use. The area I am in really sucks for the one portable/mobile concept.

Fire/EMS - VHF
Campus Ham repeater - UHF (working on VHF port -- Donations )
County Sherrif - UHF
Campus Safety - 800.

So, I have my best portable on VHF. I use it for ambulance all the time, as well as general BS on a few ham channels. But, I already need 3 radios to listen to what I want. I would consider getting a Astro UHF portable, but it would not get used as much as a VHF in my case.

You can go by the whole concept of what signal is better on what band, but IMHO - go with the radio that your going to use to talk to the most people, or listen - for me - That's VHF.

-Alex

[wa2zdy]

Yep, it depends on what bands the folks you want to talk to are on. If they're on 2m, a UHF rig won't do you much good. And vice versa of course.

Good luck,

[Jonathan KC8RYW]

Well, up in Mount Pleasant (where Central Mich U is... the county seat city, surrounded by farmers fields beyond the city limits) all police and fire is on VHF (except the Michigan State Police with their 100% APCO-25 800meg system, and maybe a few small FD's around the county still running on LB.) Most ham repeaters in the county are on 2m, but there aren't many of them ... two. I really need to start a ham club up at school... When I see one of the 8 story dorms on campus, I can picture a nice repeater antenna on top We'd have to make sure not to interfer with the community campus repeater (UHF) and the Campus Police's repeater (VHF), which beat me to the top.

Down home, around Novi (a city in suburbia), fire is either simplex on VHF (small rural towns), or repeatered on UHF (bigger towns). Police is repeatered on UHF, except for Livonia on 800 MHz EDACS, and the county sheriff on 800 /\/\ type2. There are equal numbers of ham repeaters on 2m and on 70cm.. a dozen or so in the cities that directly neighbor mine.

I say... UHF.

Okay, who wants to help me with the APCO-25 trunking backbone? Just kidding, for now anyway.

[alex]

Heh -

What would be cool is a batlabs radio system built using voice over IP to link our sites together... have a smartzone omnilink setup... heh. Don't forget all digital IMBE Oh why not - add DES-XL to it too!

-Alex