Interesting. I thought HAM (short wave?) was a sky wave, specifically to get over mountains etc. to relatively distant stations. What am I thinking of?
You're thinking of HF ham transmissions. 2-30Mhz
The hand held ham transceivers you're talking about are either VHF ( around 144Mhz ) or UHF ( around 440Mhz ), both frequencies are pretty much line of sight. You're either using them in simplex, talking directly radio to radio, or duplex/repeater where there's repeater on top of a moutain somewhere nearby that retransmits your signal. In both cases you're not going very far.
Last edited by Joel M. Baldwin; 05/07/11 08:47 PM.
