SHF

SHF is where you’ll see a great deal of high-end and home-brewed equipment as well as antennas. The propagation for the SHF bands are only by line of sight unlike the skywave propagation experienced during communications in the HF bands. Since these bands are so small the antennas are generally more than one wave length long or easy to handle dish antennas. Many of the operations on SHF are done from rover operations where the transmit/receive is mounted directly to the dish antenna itself. Here’s an example from Wayne Yoshida, KH6WZ operating as a rover in the 10MHz and up contest:

This isn’t to say that only rovers operate in the SHF range, they are the ones that hand out much needed multipliers during contests by moving between various grids squares. Also at these frequencies you should understand the ‘high power stations are running less than 10 watts. Yes, that’s considered in the QRP range on HF but the cost of kilowatt amps on SHF would be on the pricey side to say the very least.

One good way to get educated in SHF operating is through clubs and organizations. A great place to start in weak signal work on any of the VHF and up bands, here in Florida, is through the Florida Weak Signal Society. They have a great set of beacons that make setting up your station a bit easier, the FLWSS Beacons all transmit W4FWS/b and the grid they are operating from.

One online resource you might want to check out is Tony Long, KC6QHP out of Redondo Beach, Califonia . This blog post by Tony is titled: Getting Started in Amateur Microwave Radio and it contains a lot of great links to other amateur radio microwave resources you won’t want to miss.