Clear communication to people around you is absolutely one of the most critical thing to consider when travelling through the bush.

One of the best ways to communicate on the tracks is not a new invention – so much so that even a 5 year-old boy knows about it, its with a walkie talkie – the difference between one of the weak kids toys and a real high powered UHF is quite a bit, with a quality tuned system being able to reach well beyond 16-20km’s and by taking advantage of repeater stations hundreds of Kilometers of transmission ability.

No matter how experienced you are in the outdoors, using a radio has a few little tricks and techniques to getting the clearest communication whilst using a UHF radio.

There are many important things to keep in mind when using a UHF Radio, we recommend finding the instruction manual for the particular UHF unit you own for more specific details on how to adjust the settings.

1. Be courteous

Just like in the real world, being polite is critical to not making enemies, and by allowing others to communicate without interrupting is key to using a UHF radio effectively

So, the first step when talking via radio is to wait until anyone currently making a transmission has finished their transmission before speaking. It is important to keep in mind that when using a UHF unit you cannot hear incoming transmissions if you have keyed on and if the other transmission is still sending it is likely their signal will be either overlapped by yours, or vice versa and your transmission will cancel out and likely go unheard.

This means you will not receive potentially critical information about the track conditions ahead, road hazards and other important information.

2. Don’t eat the microphone

Although it may look tasty, too many people make this fatal mistake, with modern technology the microphones built into UHF radio handles are super sensitive and a beginners first mistake when using a UHF radio is to put the microphone directly up to their mouth, this results in a distorted mess on the other end leaving your mates or potential rescuers confused and irritated.

The best way to fix this issue, is to talk across the microphone and have it placed about one hands width away from your mouth, this will prevent the wind from your breath from blasting the microphone and keep the transmission sound clear and easy to interpret.

3. Go through the LEGAL channels

The Australian government recently introduced new legislation to protect a handful of UHF Channels and reserve them for emergencies and digital data transmissions, along with the introduction of 80 potential UHF channels and devices that are capable of using them. This means there are many extra free channels that are now available, that you can use.

Don’t fear your dads old 40 channel UHF device will still work on the older predesignated 40 channels (ch1-ch40) and operate just fine.

It is important to only use Channel 5 and Channel 35 only during an emergency, generally you will need to engage duplex mode, and wait for a response.

You can find a chart online to help you figure out exactly which channels you can use and which you should avoid.

If misused heavy fines do apply and there is the potential for jail time for using these emergency channels when not in a real emergency apply so be careful!

4. Know your range

Many people forget that a UHF radio can potentially in absolutely ideal conditions reach up to and beyond 25km. This factor can be forgotten, and pointless chatter can be heard well down the way so keep the banter a little more low key and make sure no one else is listening in before getting rowdy!

Different radio wattage ratings and different antenna decibel ratings offer varying reception and transmission range. With your typical vehicle mounted 5W UHF like the Oricom UHF380PK coupled with the included higher gain 6.5dBi you can reach up to 25kms.

Whilst lower powered devices like the Oricom UHF2190 handheld UHF units offer 2W of power and next to no gain on the antennas giving far less range and approximately 5km range (line of sight).

All radio ranges operate by line-of-sight, which means mountains, trees and even your own vehicle can block out the signal resulting in far shorter range.

5. SCANNING

Most UHF devices including many cheap handheld units include a scanning feature, it may seem strange and you may not understand why you would ever require a scanning function but it is definitely something that will come in extremely handy whilst out 4WDing.

If you leave your radio cycling through the scan feature, it will constantly skip through the whole range of channels searching for transmissions in the area that your unit can receive. This will give you a heads up if there are others in the area that are also 4WDing and can prevent blind corner head on accidents and it can also give you a way of communicating with other vehicles in case you need a recovery.

This doesn’t always work but if people are out there it is good to know if you can get a hand if you need it.

6. Duplex vs Simplex

Plastered all over the marketing material you’ll find that your device has a Duplex function. This feature allows your UHF device to transmit on one channel and receive on another, which will let you use one of the many repeater stations dotted across the country.

A repeater station is a base station that picks up on the transmission output by your device and resends the transmission from an elevated high-power antenna resulting in a much further transmission w.

PRO TIP- We know of a situation where people were using Duplex via a repeater station to transmit between 2 locations that had no line of sight but were approximately 4kms or 5kms away with a large hill in between. And using duplex reached a repeater 20km away from them and could read each other loud and clear!

7. Linguistics

There are a few pro bits of radio slang you absolutely MUST learn, you may have heard some of these before on TV or from watching the boys on the 4WD Action DVD’s!

Breaker, breaker – This is used to start a transmission, it implies a message is about to come through, usually the first and last word of a sentence is repeated in case it gets interrupted by other transmissions.

10-4, copy that, roger – Translates to message heard loud and clear!

What’s your 20 – Where are you!

Affirmative – Means yes

Negative, negatory – Means no (as above)

Just like with phonetic alphabet (Alpha, Bravo, Charlie… etc) certain words and sounds over the radio can be difficult to hear. By using words like these it is a clearer way to confirm information over the radio.

8. Bring a backup

It is always good practice to make sure you carry a spare radio, this is particularly important when you are travelling to more remote areas, we prefer 1 handheld and 1 vehicle-mounted unit, as this will allow your passengers to communicate with your vehicle when guiding you through tough tracks, and also lets you scan monitor different channels whilst driving offering more versatility.

Hopefully from this brief UHF how too guide you have learned a thing or two about using a UHF radio,  they are fun and they are free, and they don’t require any mobile phone towers to operate, so can make convoys and remote area driving, easier and safer. So fit a UHF radio to your 4WD and grab a handheld so you can have more fun on the tracks!