VHF communication

This works particularly well over water, and HF Surface Wave can be used to communicate between ships hundreds of miles apart. HF Surface Wave provides a more robust service than Skywave and is particularly suitable for higher speed operation . This can make it an excellent choice for Naval Task Group communication.

Aviation air-to-ground communications . Amateur radio. Shortwave international and regional broadcasting. Maritime sea-to-shore and ship-to-ship services.

Space weather impacts radio communication in a number of ways. At frequencies in the 1 to 30 mega Hertz range (known as “High Frequency” or HF radio), the changes in ionospheric density and structure modify the transmission path and even block transmission of HF radio signals completely.

But the real advantage of HF is skywave propagation, where a single link can span distances as great as 3,000 km (a little less than 1,900 miles) . Skywave propagation occurs when the radio wave is refracted (bent) in the uppermost layer of the atmosphere, called the ionosphere.

VHF operates at a higher frequency range than HF , usually between 30-300 MHz. These transmissions, due to their higher frequency, penetrate through the Ionosphere, with little or no refraction. VHF propagation is ‘line of sight’ in nature and so is restricted to shorter-range communications.

The advantage of the HF band is that radio waves of these frequencies are refracted (bent) by the ionosphere so that the waves return to the Earth’s surface at long distances beyond the horizon ,…