Bath, NY - Steuben legislators agree to buy $1.1 million radio system

[JRayfield]

As a professional in the land mobile radio industry for over 33 years, I completely disagree with the idea that the 'demise' of lowband has been due to manufacturers wanting to sell other equipment. I have very few customers (actually, 1 customer) who still uses lowband. The last customer, besides this one, who used lowband, complained constantly of poor range, which was due to skip conditions causing severe interference. Also, many users who want wide-area coverage, want that coverage mobile-to-mobile and portable-to-portable. Lowband doesn't give nearly as much coverage, mobile-to-mobile and portable-to-portable, as what can be achieved with multiple repeaters on higher frequencies.

John Rayfield, Jr. CETma

I choose not to engage in the DMR part of the discussion, but I do agree that the "dinosaurs" of low band are purely a marketing decision to sell more infrastructure-based solutions rather than discrete components of a conventional system. Do a search of some states and you can see low band licenses in both public safety and business pools have shrunk tremendously from even 20 years ago.

As of right now, Daniels makes a low band base station and Kenwood makes low band mobiles. Extremely solid equipment and every bit as good as the two big manufacturers used to be (emphasis on "used to"). Low band portables suck and don't radiate efficiently. I can see going to VHF or UHF for portables with Pyramid MO3 units for fireground or tactical operations if the UHF trunked systems up there haven't consumed all of the UHF frequencies with FB8 exclusivity.

Low band is certainly feasible and still has great utility. In this age of radiomen dying off and kids from IT running things, low band has become the best kept secret around.