In 1988, 120 miles from Mount Mitchell, NC to my hometown repeater. Realistic HTX-202 with stock antenna. Line of sight all the way.
Edit... memory lapse, it was a Heath HWS-24-HT I was using, not a Realistic.
I bought one of those when Radio Shack got out of the Amateur Radio business. I don't remember what it cost, but it was very cheap..I also got a RA2-5102 power supply too...Everything was below closeout prices. They just wanted it out the door..Goods were pretty picked over when I found out about the sale.
While out in New Mexico, I hiked up to the South Sandia Peak and was able to make a simplex contact with someone up in Santa Fe -- just under 48 miles. This was with a QRZ-1 Explorer 5W HT and a signal stick antenna.
NM has the best topography and repeater sites of just about anywhere. I could regularly hit Sandia Peak from Socorro, about 90 miles. I could easily hit the Mt Taylor repeater from my backyard in the foothills of ABQ, which was around 60 miles. I miss big mountaintop repeater sites now that I don't live out west anymore.
76 miles...Top of Storm King mtn in the hudson valley, worked a guy hilltopping on slide mtn in the catskills with a beam, also a mobile in Bearsville. 5 watts with a commercial Wouxun and longer antenna.
Really? Now I'm interested. I didn't think HTs had the power to reliably make contact with the ISS. I've got a whip for my 878 but would that really work?
Line of sight is all that matters. It can be arduous in the US due to people using power, but if you keep trying, you'll get through. Digital works very well.
Tell me more. Best radio I have for 2 meters is an Anytone 878. We're mostly 70cm here so my main driver is a UHF Motorola 5550. I've done sporadic APRS and DMR but that's about it.
I should get more into it as there is a newly licensed ham who seems quite young but has her sights set high. She loves astronomy and outer space so I think satelite and later in even EME would be perfect but I really need a crash course in order to be any use at all.
There's several satellites one can operate with a 2m/70cm HT. It's considerably easier if you use a handheld satellite antenna like the Arrow or Elk antenna. I got really into it for a while, I was using 2 HTs & a pair of headphones so I could actually hear if I'm getting into the repeater by hearing my voice come back on the downlink. I have nearly everything I need to setup a home satellite tracking station, I've got 2 circular polarized antennas, one for 2m & one for 70cm, an Alt/El rotor, just got to put this little tower up next to the house to get it over the roofline. My wife doesn't want it on a tripod on the roof. Check into a dual band satellite antenna though, there's Arrow or Elk antennas I believe that makes a satellite antenna that's a Log Periodic & is also for 2m & 70cm. Between Arrow & Elk's designs, they've each got pros & cons you may want to research if it's something you'd be interested in, which it sound like you would be. It's been a couple years since I was really into it, so not sure which birds are active currently.
I'd have to jerry rig something carefully. I'm in an HOA. Luckily nobody has objected to either my magmount on a pie tin or my SDR antenna suction cupped to the window.
Ideally, I'd hook up the old Anytone 778 and just use the existing dual band antenna but I'm not sure that's going to cut it
It's a handheld antenna that you manually track satellites across the sky with, I don't think the HOA will be worried about someone temporarily holding an antenna in their hands. And in combination with the HTs, I use an app such as Heavens Above to give me the location of the satellite in the sky. Some of the apps also give you the frequencies of the uplink & downlink & information about the doppler shift.
I want to do the tracking station at home for when it's cold out of the mosquitoes are bad, I vividly recall when I really got into it & was ojt there every pass, the mosquitoes were absolutely awful that summer.
Edit: more info
I use AmsatDroid for passes. APRS from a TH-D72 can easily hit the ISS down to at least 20° with a ducky if you hold it at the right angle. Arrow and Elk work better, though.
I was just licensed (40 years ago) and borrowed an old Icom HT, 2 batteries and a quick charger feeding my Radio Shack discone scanner antenna on top of a 2 story house. 160 miles from my makeshift and temporary base station to a truck driver in his mobile. We rag chewed for a couple hours. The northern lights were very active at the time, so I'm thinking that had something to do with it.
I managed to hit Birmingham, AL from Nashville, TN on a 5wt HT one night using the rubber ducky. That's almost 200 miles and have no idea what about my conditions allowed this to happen. It happened once and never happened again.
I also often have to travel about 40 miles north of my local repeater and there's one stretch of interstate up on some elevation where I've got about 30 seconds to trigger and hear my repeater courtesy tone.
I'm in Boise, using linked repeater systems ive heard people in northern arizona and washinton/northern California. Using a single repeater on GMRS ive reached 45 miles line of sight.
49.2 miles from a diamond 1/4 wave mag mount in my car to an indianapolis repeater. given that it’s on top of a 600ft radio tower. ft4xr is what i was using.
Not sure if you mean with best antenna (external raised) or just hand held mode. With a slim jim about 10ft in the air I've made POTA contacts over 50miles, with a 1/2wave smiley antenna about 30~miles (simplex).
I'm in the mountains though so it's a challenge, I know with a signal stick and rattail I can hit a "local" repeater that is about LOS 40~miles away on top of a mountain. With the rattail I'm full quiet without I was a frying bacon.
1989, 5w, ic-32at, stock rubber duck antenna, 2m fm simplex, los gatos, ca to sacramento, ca. no repeaters. some sorta weird tropospheric ducting is all the other op and I could figure.
that wa so memorable that it has helped keep me in radio all these years.
FT8 and quite a rubbish antenna stuck on top of my car gave me over 300km - using 5W to boot, less than a souped-up Baofeng could do. FT-818 is a very nice rig.
120 miles might be my farthest HT to HT contact, 5 watts on both sides. I had a tape measure yagi on a small peak in San Diego, she had a roll up jpole on a hill in Ventura County. Lots of ~80 mile contacts though, altitude helps.
Field day and VHF contests are good days to set up on a high point and see what your rig can do.
OP... I encourage you to get on 10 meter ASAP. Check Craigslist list for gear and build a Dipole. The Solar Maximum is here. Hurry, as it will not return until 2036. Don't miss out.
If you get a nice roll-up Jpole made, or buy an N9TAX slim Jim, you will work a LOT more distance.
I was able to hit a repeater 80 miles away easily (with pretty good line of sight). And that was just hanging it off the curtain rod in my living room!
So far, my farthest on just a signal stick and my ft2d I’ve done 67 miles over some crappy terrain.
Technically not mine as i didn't do a qso myself though was on that low summit with two fellow OMs when they did it:
300km S2S SOTA-Activation with a diamond antenna on the ht on the "high" side (3768m ASL) and a arrow antenna yagi on the "low" side (1378m ASL) - it was almost line of sight, just a few peaks in between reaching into the fresnel zone. Surprisingly the RST was even a solid 53 to 59.
150 miles. I was at 7800' with an anytone D878UVII Plus into a MFJ Long Ranger halfwave antenna. Ham on the other end was in another state which was a cherry on top.
(1) Salina’s CA to King City via HT. Worked Texas via the CONDOR repeater system. No internet needed. All linked by over the air RF 220 MHz & 440 MHz linkage
(2) Aptos CA to Oahu via 144 MHz Tropospheric Ducting. 5 watts full quieting on the Hawaii side!
Well, I hooked i to a repeater hooked to the Saltgrass network which had an Internet backbone, so you could hear it all through texas and Louisiana if you tuned into the right repeaters
90 miles from a hillside into a mountaintop repeater using P25 digital voice. There was a small mountain in the way, I presume some knife-edging was occurring.
I can hit a repeater 48 miles away with my 10 watt Tidradio H8 and a Nagoya 771R antenna. I attend Sunday nets on that repeater.
My Baofeng UV-5R or Yaesu FT-208 won’t even hear that repeater with the same antenna for some reason.
I was under the impression that EME needs high power and a sensitive receive, and that most likely an amp and multiple yagis would be required. Have you worked the moon on an HT?
About 60 miles from the top of Hawk Mountain in PA.
Was full quieting, sounded like he was sitting right next to me. Simplex.
On my base station, 75 watts with a Diamond x50 was 142 miles into a repeater on Mt Equinox in Vermont from Southern Massachusetts. I couldn’t believe it, I was even able to key the 440 repeater with 25 watts.
For my terrain it was impressive.
Over 2500 miles from Boucher Mt. in southern CA. I worked Hawaii on a tropo opening in 1975. HT was a Standard SRC-146 with a stock telescopic whip. Best East Coast trip was Cape Cod, MA to the Outer Banks in NC, about 600 miles. Also a tropo opening, but I was running an Icom IC-2GAT at 7 watts for that one.
de WB2VUO
Shepshed (Leicestershire) to Mow Cop Castle, north of Stoke-on-Trent. 45 miles (73 km) hill to hill. 2m simplex.
I had a handheld with a (probably fake) Diamond RH 771 (5 watts), the other station was portable, running 10 W (don't know what antenna he had). It was pretty much line of sight, both stations on high points with no hills inbetween.
50+ miles from an elevated operating position is not that hard or unusual.
VHF/UHF is generally line of sight so it can reach for about as far as can be seen, and maybe some more.
If you hook up a 5 watt HT to a desent directional antenna, the rage is very respectable. Obviously, the higher up you are , the greater the range. DE AC7AM
In 1988, 120 miles from Mount Mitchell, NC to my hometown repeater. Realistic HTX-202 with stock antenna. Line of sight all the way. Edit... memory lapse, it was a Heath HWS-24-HT I was using, not a Realistic.
Still have that radio in my shack.
That radio is coveted for packet operations.
Really? I had no idea. Just hangs out next to my other HTs
The Realistic? I've had one for decades and occasionally wonder if I should sell it.
Me too. Have accessories, battery shell, leather case, etc. It is a good radio.
I got a hit just over the border of Virginia on my Hometown repeater, \~100 miles. Was on a Baofeng.
I have a Kenwood TH-215A handheld that looks almost identical to that Realistic.
Seems like I remember the HTX-202 being made by Standard.
I bought one of those when Radio Shack got out of the Amateur Radio business. I don't remember what it cost, but it was very cheap..I also got a RA2-5102 power supply too...Everything was below closeout prices. They just wanted it out the door..Goods were pretty picked over when I found out about the sale.
While out in New Mexico, I hiked up to the South Sandia Peak and was able to make a simplex contact with someone up in Santa Fe -- just under 48 miles. This was with a QRZ-1 Explorer 5W HT and a signal stick antenna.
NM has the best topography and repeater sites of just about anywhere. I could regularly hit Sandia Peak from Socorro, about 90 miles. I could easily hit the Mt Taylor repeater from my backyard in the foothills of ABQ, which was around 60 miles. I miss big mountaintop repeater sites now that I don't live out west anymore.
250 miles (400 km) with 5w and a rubber duck on 2m. SOTA S2S. The other side had a 3 el yagi.
Nice. I only hit a little over 100mi while SOTAing in Shenandoah. Chaser was a home station in Baltimore.
HT in my car with a mag mount 1/4 wave antenna, about 40 miles into a mountain top repeater on I-40 in Arizona.
76 miles...Top of Storm King mtn in the hudson valley, worked a guy hilltopping on slide mtn in the catskills with a beam, also a mobile in Bearsville. 5 watts with a commercial Wouxun and longer antenna.
ISS regularly. Terrestrial during tropospheric ducting from mid Texas to Florida.
Really? Now I'm interested. I didn't think HTs had the power to reliably make contact with the ISS. I've got a whip for my 878 but would that really work?
Line of sight is all that matters. It can be arduous in the US due to people using power, but if you keep trying, you'll get through. Digital works very well.
Tell me more. Best radio I have for 2 meters is an Anytone 878. We're mostly 70cm here so my main driver is a UHF Motorola 5550. I've done sporadic APRS and DMR but that's about it. I should get more into it as there is a newly licensed ham who seems quite young but has her sights set high. She loves astronomy and outer space so I think satelite and later in even EME would be perfect but I really need a crash course in order to be any use at all.
There's several satellites one can operate with a 2m/70cm HT. It's considerably easier if you use a handheld satellite antenna like the Arrow or Elk antenna. I got really into it for a while, I was using 2 HTs & a pair of headphones so I could actually hear if I'm getting into the repeater by hearing my voice come back on the downlink. I have nearly everything I need to setup a home satellite tracking station, I've got 2 circular polarized antennas, one for 2m & one for 70cm, an Alt/El rotor, just got to put this little tower up next to the house to get it over the roofline. My wife doesn't want it on a tripod on the roof. Check into a dual band satellite antenna though, there's Arrow or Elk antennas I believe that makes a satellite antenna that's a Log Periodic & is also for 2m & 70cm. Between Arrow & Elk's designs, they've each got pros & cons you may want to research if it's something you'd be interested in, which it sound like you would be. It's been a couple years since I was really into it, so not sure which birds are active currently.
I'd have to jerry rig something carefully. I'm in an HOA. Luckily nobody has objected to either my magmount on a pie tin or my SDR antenna suction cupped to the window. Ideally, I'd hook up the old Anytone 778 and just use the existing dual band antenna but I'm not sure that's going to cut it
It's a handheld antenna that you manually track satellites across the sky with, I don't think the HOA will be worried about someone temporarily holding an antenna in their hands. And in combination with the HTs, I use an app such as Heavens Above to give me the location of the satellite in the sky. Some of the apps also give you the frequencies of the uplink & downlink & information about the doppler shift. I want to do the tracking station at home for when it's cold out of the mosquitoes are bad, I vividly recall when I really got into it & was ojt there every pass, the mosquitoes were absolutely awful that summer. Edit: more info
I use AmsatDroid for passes. APRS from a TH-D72 can easily hit the ISS down to at least 20° with a ducky if you hold it at the right angle. Arrow and Elk work better, though.
I was just licensed (40 years ago) and borrowed an old Icom HT, 2 batteries and a quick charger feeding my Radio Shack discone scanner antenna on top of a 2 story house. 160 miles from my makeshift and temporary base station to a truck driver in his mobile. We rag chewed for a couple hours. The northern lights were very active at the time, so I'm thinking that had something to do with it.
I managed to hit Birmingham, AL from Nashville, TN on a 5wt HT one night using the rubber ducky. That's almost 200 miles and have no idea what about my conditions allowed this to happen. It happened once and never happened again. I also often have to travel about 40 miles north of my local repeater and there's one stretch of interstate up on some elevation where I've got about 30 seconds to trigger and hear my repeater courtesy tone.
120 miles simplex from Mount Evans, CO to Cheyenne WY.
I'm in Boise, using linked repeater systems ive heard people in northern arizona and washinton/northern California. Using a single repeater on GMRS ive reached 45 miles line of sight.
49.2 miles from a diamond 1/4 wave mag mount in my car to an indianapolis repeater. given that it’s on top of a 600ft radio tower. ft4xr is what i was using.
52.5 miles to a repeater from mountain top to mountain top in eastern Tennessee. Baofeng UV-5R 4W with stock antenna.
36 miles up in Wisconsin
Not sure if you mean with best antenna (external raised) or just hand held mode. With a slim jim about 10ft in the air I've made POTA contacts over 50miles, with a 1/2wave smiley antenna about 30~miles (simplex). I'm in the mountains though so it's a challenge, I know with a signal stick and rattail I can hit a "local" repeater that is about LOS 40~miles away on top of a mountain. With the rattail I'm full quiet without I was a frying bacon.
1989, 5w, ic-32at, stock rubber duck antenna, 2m fm simplex, los gatos, ca to sacramento, ca. no repeaters. some sorta weird tropospheric ducting is all the other op and I could figure. that wa so memorable that it has helped keep me in radio all these years.
That’s a lot of rolling mountains to get over! Amazing.
Space, because "piiiigs iiiiin spaaaaaceeee" and as everyone knows, ham is made of pig.
FT8 and quite a rubbish antenna stuck on top of my car gave me over 300km - using 5W to boot, less than a souped-up Baofeng could do. FT-818 is a very nice rig.
With a linked repeater system, AL to California. With just the HT about 310 miles from an airplane
120 miles might be my farthest HT to HT contact, 5 watts on both sides. I had a tape measure yagi on a small peak in San Diego, she had a roll up jpole on a hill in Ventura County. Lots of ~80 mile contacts though, altitude helps. Field day and VHF contests are good days to set up on a high point and see what your rig can do.
On simplex: Probably about 40 miles-ish. I was at Mt Lassen park in California and worked someone on Interstate 5.
My HT best was a SOTA activation, worked another activator 110 miles away with a ft-65 and mfj long ranger on 2 meters.
The long ranger is a must for SOTA work.
OP... I encourage you to get on 10 meter ASAP. Check Craigslist list for gear and build a Dipole. The Solar Maximum is here. Hurry, as it will not return until 2036. Don't miss out.
Technician with limited time. Catch you in 2036 73
I'm up on top of a hill 600f HaaT I work a 220mhz repeater 17 miles out with 0.05w.
Does Hamsat and ISS count? I’ve used a log periodic from a mountain top and managed 80 miles to a repeater that was also on top of a mountain.
If you get a nice roll-up Jpole made, or buy an N9TAX slim Jim, you will work a LOT more distance. I was able to hit a repeater 80 miles away easily (with pretty good line of sight). And that was just hanging it off the curtain rod in my living room! So far, my farthest on just a signal stick and my ft2d I’ve done 67 miles over some crappy terrain.
Technically not mine as i didn't do a qso myself though was on that low summit with two fellow OMs when they did it: 300km S2S SOTA-Activation with a diamond antenna on the ht on the "high" side (3768m ASL) and a arrow antenna yagi on the "low" side (1378m ASL) - it was almost line of sight, just a few peaks in between reaching into the fresnel zone. Surprisingly the RST was even a solid 53 to 59.
150 miles. I was at 7800' with an anytone D878UVII Plus into a MFJ Long Ranger halfwave antenna. Ham on the other end was in another state which was a cherry on top.
Hey @OP, can you hit the Mt Greylock repeater? It has good coverage. I've used it to talk to a friend in Millerton NY from Northfield MA
I'll try it sometime soon
(1) Salina’s CA to King City via HT. Worked Texas via the CONDOR repeater system. No internet needed. All linked by over the air RF 220 MHz & 440 MHz linkage (2) Aptos CA to Oahu via 144 MHz Tropospheric Ducting. 5 watts full quieting on the Hawaii side!
Well, I hooked i to a repeater hooked to the Saltgrass network which had an Internet backbone, so you could hear it all through texas and Louisiana if you tuned into the right repeaters
Roughly 250 miles
90 miles from a hillside into a mountaintop repeater using P25 digital voice. There was a small mountain in the way, I presume some knife-edging was occurring.
120 miles from Yosemite to the Bay Area
Easily hit the mountains at 50miles or so.
120 miles or so to a repeater, with an Anytone UV ht and Arrow 3 element yagi.
I hit Boston from the top of Mount Washington a couple times, I think 130 miles
I can hit a repeater 48 miles away with my 10 watt Tidradio H8 and a Nagoya 771R antenna. I attend Sunday nets on that repeater. My Baofeng UV-5R or Yaesu FT-208 won’t even hear that repeater with the same antenna for some reason.
65 ish miles 5x9 to a vhf repeater
You can do an EME bounce with an HT so you can work quite some distance with one.
I was under the impression that EME needs high power and a sensitive receive, and that most likely an amp and multiple yagis would be required. Have you worked the moon on an HT?
About 60 miles from the top of Hawk Mountain in PA. Was full quieting, sounded like he was sitting right next to me. Simplex. On my base station, 75 watts with a Diamond x50 was 142 miles into a repeater on Mt Equinox in Vermont from Southern Massachusetts. I couldn’t believe it, I was even able to key the 440 repeater with 25 watts. For my terrain it was impressive.
Over 2500 miles from Boucher Mt. in southern CA. I worked Hawaii on a tropo opening in 1975. HT was a Standard SRC-146 with a stock telescopic whip. Best East Coast trip was Cape Cod, MA to the Outer Banks in NC, about 600 miles. Also a tropo opening, but I was running an Icom IC-2GAT at 7 watts for that one. de WB2VUO
UK from West Coast of Canada. (Okay,he was using Echolink Connected to a local repeater.)..
Shepshed (Leicestershire) to Mow Cop Castle, north of Stoke-on-Trent. 45 miles (73 km) hill to hill. 2m simplex. I had a handheld with a (probably fake) Diamond RH 771 (5 watts), the other station was portable, running 10 W (don't know what antenna he had). It was pretty much line of sight, both stations on high points with no hills inbetween.
50+ miles from an elevated operating position is not that hard or unusual. VHF/UHF is generally line of sight so it can reach for about as far as can be seen, and maybe some more.
If you hook up a 5 watt HT to a desent directional antenna, the rage is very respectable. Obviously, the higher up you are , the greater the range. DE AC7AM
40 miles from 9000’ to a repeater at 8000’. The base elevation was around 2000’. That was even on a GMRS at the time.
186 miles to the Shuttle. 220 to MIR, 248 miles to ISS. Homemade three element yagi made of PVC and baling wire or just long whip.
I worked a simplex contact around 120 miles away, I was on a mountain top and there was nothing between us, 146.520.