For the most part, more channels. The VHF High band also makes it possible to use handhelds, which the huge antenna sizes with VHF mid (i.e. 78MHz) make impractical. Now that FESA/SES vehicles will have VHF mid band radios, they can also use them on close by bands such as VHF Marine.yorky wrote:Then what's the advantage to these new frequencies?
The new radios also have UHF capability and can cross-band repeat between VHF and UHF. Why is that useful? For a start, UHF works well from within buildings, so personnel can use smaller UHF radios to talk to 6AR relayed through their vehicle automatically.
I've thought of another example (probably not a practical real-world example, but it shows my ignorance of these sorts of ops
)Pretend for a moment there's a large search-and-rescue operation going on at the coast with many volunteers. We could have:FRS etc vehicles using their VHF high band or UHF channels
SES using their UHF channels
Police using their UHF analogue channels
Private boats using VHF marine
Volunteers on foot with UHF CBs
Normally, the only way all of these people could communicate would be for a command post vehicle to be set up and have someone monitor all the radios on all the bands and relay messages between everyone - A huge hassle. Since vehicle with the new VHF/UHF radios can connect one channel on one band to another channel on another band, you can instead link together all these channels so everyone can hear all conversations regardless of what radio they're carrying.
