On Sun, 2004-01-11 at 12:56, John J. McDonough wrote:
> You may want to check with the New Zeland equivalent of the FCC.  Here in
> the U.S., unlicensed 435 MHz operation is limited to very low power and very
> small antennas.  Under those conditions, 2 km may be unrealistic.  Since all
> nations coordinate their spectrum use, it is very likely that NZ rules are
> similar.

Excellent advice. In NZ the information is available from
http://www.med.govt.nz/rsm/.

The amateur window at just over 400MHz is small. There are others at
approx (read from chart) 30MHz, 51-54MHz and 144-148MHz. From comments
and web reading so far it seems UHF may not be a beginner's best option.
I'm still searching for the national regs on tx power, antenna length
and sideband attenuation.

Thanks for the steer on the ARRL. I remembered I have a copy (1997)
tucked away and have just laid my hand back on it.

Since the unit will always be heading away from the base the antennae
could be highly directional perhaps mitigating the range vs power issue.
I'll look into special function ic's once I am more familiar with the RF
concepts.

Rob

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