VHF and the digital modes may seem out of place to those who carry their radio shack on their belt but it’s true. Lately FT8 has fired up the 6 meter band, here’a screen shot of PSKReporter that shows the contacts taking place on 6 meter FT8 just an hour before this page was created (click/tap the image for a better view):
So it stands to reason that VHF digital is a good idea after all. What about the other VHF bands? 2 meters and 220MHz used as digital modes? Why not? Just because 2 meters and 220 are used for repeaters doesn’t mean they can’t also be used on the digital modes. The VHF modes are used a great deal on advanced communications as meteor scatter, airplane scatter, rain scatter and the big daddy of them all: EME. EME of course stands for Earth-Moon-Earth (also referred to as moonbounce) where antennas are aimed at the moon to send signals to the moon and back to the earth. 2 meters is the primary band used for EME work where 4 or more 2 meter yagi antennas along with a kilowatt to boost the signal. One of the leaders in EME as well as the holder of 2M DXCC #1 is W5UN, and here is his Mighty Big Array:
W5UN’s Mighty Big Array
