VHF Comms 118-156Mhz?
 

Dear Tech forumites,

Could you tell me if any radios work up to 156mhz? i was under the impression that it vhf comms went up to 136 for civil radios.

got a little bet going that airbus radios don't go up that far. any information helpful

cheers!

They may dial up that high but probably not tx (cant recall) , but if they would / could they'd be tx'ing on spectrum owned by other services.
That would be country dependent as spectrum is sold and used as seen fit by govt agencies usually.
see radioelectronicschool.net/files/downloads/frequencyallocations.pdf for the spectrum use in Oz

In the US, 136.00 to 138.00 (137.97?) is assigned to the US Mil; up around 152.00-156.00 (I believe) is assigned to the Fire/Police Services.

The 2 metre amateur (ham) radio band is 144 to 148 mhz in Oz similar to the USA and other parts of the world I believe, but is a secondary service here.

Military VHF/FM goes up to 174 MHz, maritime uses 156 to 162 MHz.

ew73

thanks for the responses guys. kind regards

Airbus A320 VHF radios operate over the range: 118.00 to 136.975MHz with 25kHz channel spacing.

This is range tunable by the RMP and that of the Bendix transceiver.

- GY :8

GarageYears wrote:

Are you sure? Modern radios have 8.33 kHz spacing.

>The 2 metre amateur (ham) radio band is 144 to 148 mhz in Oz similar to the USA and other parts of the world I believe, but is a secondary service here.<

In ITU Region 1 the 2m amateur band is 144-146MHz and the amateur and amateur satellite services are primary users. In Regions 2 and 3 (the latter including Australia) they're also primary and the band is 144-148MHz.

Yep - sure enough. Certainly there are many modern radios that allow 8.33kHz, and it might be there is an update to the aircraft RMP as an option, but both the Bendix transceiver and the RMP state the tuning step as being 25kHz for the basic Airbus offering.

I'd be interested to hear from any current A320 crew who find this is incorrect and 8.33kHz is available.

- GY

Since 8,33 is mandatory in europe i would think everyone whose flights ever enter that region have to have 8,33kHz boxes, since around 10 years now. Not really anything new.

And 8.33 is a requirement ONLY in EuroControl! So, a US airline might very well not have 8.33 spacing.

GF

Of course an airline that never touches the EUR region does not need 8,33 spacing, however of course it is standard equipment on all airbus types as well.

The next time one of you (Flight Crew) steps into a Level D simulator would you mind checking the channel spacing? I'm currently working on a new A320 communications model for a Level D simulator and the Airbus data package for the aircraft defines 25kHz spacing - this is from Airbus simulator data package identified as GO5 D23400500 ATA100 Chapter 23-10 Issue 2 (Aug 31/1987). Note the date... I assume there is a revised s/w load for the RMP that allows 8.33kHz spacing, but it would be useful to know if the current (in-use) simulators have been updated, or retain the original configuration.

Thanks, GY