[AK-VHF] ak-vhf Digest, Vol 77, Issue 6

[Brandon Clark]

Ed and Shannon,

Thus is an interesting thread, and echoes a lot of what I've learned in my
few years of VHF/UHF radio work. With this kind of work factors you
wouldn't notice at HF become very significant, such as adding a few more
elements, getting ten feet hiher up, or adding a few more watts.

An interesting project would be to get everyone on the Tuesday and Saturday
nets to log all the contact they can hear, and then list their antenna,
location, and power on the log sheet. That could then be fed into a Google
earth map showing station locations as pins on the maps, lines as good
signal paths, and the color of the lines representing the combined "oomph"
of the stations (combined antenna gain and Tx power f9rnthe stations in
contact). After a month or two, and with a few mobile stations to try out
less used locations, you would have a map of the VHF/UHF signal paths for
south centrsl alaska. Coukd be handy for emcom and contest planning.

It's also interesting that the subject of propagation keeps coming up. I've
noticed recurring temperature inversions and low cloud activity since I
moved here in Dec. I wonder if there may be some waveguide action going on
in the area. In CA guys would wait for the right weather, drive up to the
right elevation duringnan inversion, and then been out to Hawaii on VHF
through the GHz bands, using these specific weather patterns as waveguides.
Might be happening here too.
Brandon

PS: Anchorage to Fairbanks at VHF? What bands, how much power, and from
where? Definitely need to incorporate that possibility into my roving plans.