There are numerous technical issues that can affect narrow band range versus wide band FM. Frequency stability is much more important to keep the transmitted signal in the filter passband of the receiver. Just like the old cordless phones were static prone and not very good, the newer technolgy involving companders and digital signal processing can make up for the perceived shorter range. When tests were done on a county wide VHF-Hi siren encoding system using 300 baud ASCII tone signalling, we saw only a barely detectable 1db decrease in receive levels. Proper attention to marginal antennas is also important.