Military comms: VHF / UHF
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Hello,
I have a question concerning the comms:
In civilian airplanes, the UHF is for short distance and VHF for long distance. In Falcon BMS, it is the opposite. The VHF is for interflight, the UHF for intra packages.
I look throughout many posts but it is still unclear to me. Does the US military airplanes use also the comms like in Falcon BMS ?
thank you in advance for then answer.
Best,
Cobra -
I look throughout many posts but it is still unclear to me. Does the US military airplanes use also the comms like in Falcon BMS ?
Most of the time, yes. Also because UHF can be more commonly encrypted (HQII is an example). However, there is no absolute rules.
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In civilian airplanes, the UHF is for short distance and VHF for long distance.
This is also not correct. IRL civ the VHF is for short range (or at least relative short range) and HF (yes without the U) is used for long range communication.
Gr Falcas
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I was going to say. I hardly see any civilian using UHF
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This is something ive always wondered also. As falcon is begining to model the limitations of the radio ranges, it seems to make sense victor would be more used for tactical comms. I suppose better encryption would be a good explanation as to why not. Im interested to know what the ranges modeled for the ivc in falcon actually are, like when each channel starts to break up, and when they become completely not understandable. Are those ranges modeled different for vhf and uhf?
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This is something ive always wondered also. As falcon is begining to model the limitations of the radio ranges, it seems to make sense victor would be more used for tactical comms. I suppose better encryption would be a good explanation as to why not. Im interested to know what the ranges modeled for the ivc in falcon actually are, like when each channel starts to break up, and when they become completely not understandable. Are those ranges modeled different for vhf and uhf?
Somewhat related: As radio comms become distance limited why isn’t datalink effected?
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Somewhat related: As radio comms become distance limited why isn’t datalink effected?
Be careful what you wish for
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This is something ive always wondered also. As falcon is begining to model the limitations of the radio ranges, it seems to make sense victor would be more used for tactical comms. I suppose better encryption would be a good explanation as to why not. Im interested to know what the ranges modeled for the ivc in falcon actually are, like when each channel starts to break up, and when they become completely not understandable. Are those ranges modeled different for vhf and uhf?
depends with many factors, obviously height of both the transmitter and the receiver
There is no fixed figure as it depends on way too many factors
But pages 269 and 270 of the BMS manual has the answer you’re looking for
And yes it’s different for VHF and UHF (VHF is longer)
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Be careful what you wish for
If I can’t hear ‘em on the radio, I don’t much care if I can’t see them on the HSD …. just sayin’.
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unless you’re down in the valley of death mate
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VHF is usually used for “Civilian-Like” traffic, if it’s available. There are still some aircraft which are only UHF capable, but that’s becoming less common with the newer radios, which can do both VHF and UHF.
UHF is usually AIR tactical communications, such as coordination, or AWACS comms. VHF (AM) is typically “flight” control. ATC, Tower, and sometimes intra-flight–although J-Voice is real nice for flight comms (Not implemented in BMS). Obviously, this depends on the aircraft, the tactical environment, and the players involved. IE: Army really likes FM freqs, so a lot of tactical coordination with ground forces is done on V-FM. However, this is also changing in the recent years, as many ground radios are also capable of multi-band comms, and a lot more aircraft are being used for CAS, many of which can’t operate on FM freqs.
The other player in all this, which BMS does not implement, is SATCOM. Most USAF aircraft these days are SATCOM capable, which takes up one of the radios, but provides true BLOS comms. In the picture below, you can see the antenna sticking up just aft of the canopy.
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UHF is also more commonly capable of FH so it provides jam resistant comms, also enemy ADF equipment have hard time locating the source when radio uses FH.
Helicopters sometimes use HF radios in addition to VHF and UHF. I guess this is because they usually fly low and they need nap of the earth comms which means they need either SATCOM or HF or sometimes even both (IIRC Apaches has both).
Here is what Apache has:
And here is the swine with new VHF UHF radio (IIRC this radio is described in CH-47 manual aswel as A-10C manual).
Manuals are here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4xitrrBUDsYNnpfb0JIWUc1aFk/view
http://airspot.ru/book/file/1005/CH-47D.pdf
Here is Havequick manual: https://pl.scribd.com/document/51488058/arc-164-manual
To download from Scribd you can use: https://dlscrib.com/ -
UHF/Satcom are mostly/all? digital , VHF/HF are mostly analog, can be digital but slower bit-rate. If you would use bounce-back from ionosphere for digital, it would be very slow , like below 9600baud , or even less.
Like ELF for subs…. few chars per minute … not bits per second
I know from my packet-radio tests, playing chess with Japan dudes over LW … on mil. type Yug. radio , RUP-12, connected to 900bps modem , Ah those were the days. But no FH or jamming, only civil
, but you could use rt-enc.
http://www.cryptomuseum.com/radio/yugo/rup12/index.htm -
Very informarive thread, thanks to all.
Now I have a question for Squads using IVC.
What is your advice: do you use the WDP’s datacard? Do you use the same settings flying in Korea and Balkans, as in the Balkans theater comms are VHF only?
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Well, you have to understand that radios/IVC in BMS are Virtual. … so, can be anything you want. even freq. 12345 works
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12345 irl is interplane
I don’t get your question birdy.
In our squad we use vhf ivc for intra flight and uhf ivc for atc, awacs and package coms. Regardless of the theatre.
If that was what you were asking? -
@Red:
12345 irl is interplane
I don’t get your question birdy.
In our squad we use vhf ivc for intra flight and uhf ivc for atc, awacs and package coms. Regardless of the theatre.
If that was what you were asking?Thank you Red Dog.
That’s was my question.
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Somewhat related: As radio comms become distance limited why isn’t datalink effected?
To be fair, link 16 is usually good out to about 300 miles anyway… and I cant see you being worried about not seeing folks outside that range. PPLIs are filtered past 240 miles anyway.
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UHF/Satcom are mostly/all? digital , VHF/HF are mostly analog, can be digital but slower bit-rate. If you would use bounce-back from ionosphere for digital, it would be very slow , like below 9600baud , or even less.
Like ELF for subs…. few chars per minute … not bits per second
I know from my packet-radio tests, playing chess with Japan dudes over LW … on mil. type Yug. radio , RUP-12, connected to 900bps modem , Ah those were the days. But no FH or jamming, only civil
, but you could use rt-enc.
http://www.cryptomuseum.com/radio/yugo/rup12/index.htmThey’re all analogue, but you can send digital information over any of them. The frequency or medium doesn’t really matter, it’s the protocol used underneath. It’s either analogue noise being interpreted (Like an old dial-up modem) or digital “key” presses being interpreted as 1s and 0s. One of them most-used and common datalinks in the world for the longest time was Link-11, which was primarily run across HF, but it was still a digital signal.
As for freq hopping, I don’t think it’s the band that limited it primarily to UHF, I think it was because at the time very few tactical aircraft were flying with VHF radios, so there wasn’t much reason to research the tech. As mentioned before, there are still some aircraft out there without VHF caps.
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Thank you all for you very valuable information.
This is really helpful
Have a great day / Bonne journée
Cobra
