Making the most of whats left of the VHF/UHF bands

[KF0NYL]

I have honestly never heard any digital comms or any analog for military ops from 30 to 70.

A lot of that depends on if you live close to any big bases or training areas. The SINCGARS system has been in use since around 1994 and it uses encryption along with frequency hopping.

I retired from the Army in 1996 and we were still using mostly the older analog equipment on 30-70 MHz at that time. My last duty station was the National Training Center-Ft Irwin, Ca. Even though it was an Army base, we trained regularly with Air Force and Navy pilots along with Marine units.

 

[YalekW]

Cool!

 

[K6GBW]

I know that the M.O.D handed a lot of there old frequencies back to Ofcom long ago over here... so I imagine its a similar situation in the US. There digital comms are most likely going to be UHF.

The US Military still has over 1,000 frequencies in the 30-78MHz range. When you run FHSS it goes through those frequencies so fast that you can listen with an FM radio and you will hear nothing at all. So to the causal listener it sounds like the frequencies aren’t being used, but they really are. The NATO nations will be using Low Band for a very very long time because 1. They already have the equipment for it and it would cost too much money to change, 2. Low Band actually works quite well for what they do. Moving into an area with no infrastructure and communicating within a 10-15 mile radius is perfect for their use case. 3. Over the world those frequencies are not used nearly as much as VHF High or UHF, so they are set apart from commercial users. The military radio sets now have not only VHF Low Band, but also UHF for Tac Sat. They have much better encryption than before and they are more powerful than before.

 

[KC3ECJ]

The US Military still has over 1,000 frequencies in the 30-78MHz range. When you run FHSS it goes through those frequencies so fast that you can listen with an FM radio and you will hear nothing at all. So to the causal listener it sounds like the frequencies aren’t being used, but they really are. The NATO nations will be using Low Band for a very very long time because 1. They already have the equipment for it and it would cost too much money to change, 2. Low Band actually works quite well for what they do. Moving into an area with no infrastructure and communicating within a 10-15 mile radius is perfect for their use case. 3. Over the world those frequencies are not used nearly as much as VHF High or UHF, so they are set apart from commercial users. The military radio sets now have not only VHF Low Band, but also UHF for Tac Sat. They have much better encryption than before and they are more powerful than before.

There's apparently utility meters here on 900 MHz here that use frequency hopping.
It will appear as tiny dots on a waterfall display.

I have a couple 900 MHz NTSC cameras and a monitor for them.

The hopping signals show up in the video signal as changes in brightness.