If you have your Technician license or greater I encourage you to experiment with the North American Simplex frequencies – especially around the June summer and December winter solstice when sporadic-E propagation peaks. The VHF Activity weekends to put on your calendar are the ARRL VHF contest weekends – but don’t be afraid of being on the air during a contest. Unless you plan to submit your log you are not even required to log contacts. It’s a terrific time to be on 2m simplex – you may hear some people from 100 miles away! It’s also a great exercise to know how and actually use the radio without a repeater. For your first time I suggest planning to spend an hour or two on a Saturday afternoon or evening with a 2m FM mobile and a magnetic mount antenna and finding a hilltop (church parking lot, water tower, whatever). Being able to drive to a hilltop will provide an opportunity to make several contacts! If you can, bring a 6m radio and a 6m vertical! A common multi-band mobile radio that can operate on 2m and 70cm will make it even more fun – when you contact someone ask them if they have other bands. VHF contesting Rovers will have several!
The VHF contests bring a lot of activity to the VHF bands for the weekends. If you plan accordingly you can do a lot of testing during these contests. These contests are very simple. Know your Maidenhead Grid. Know the National Simplex Frequencies. Program them into your radio’s memories and/or know how to switch from Memory to VFO and key them in or program several into adjacent memories. Set your squelch to OFF or level 1. You do not need to submit a log, nor do you even need to log at all. You can simply be there and leisurely make some contacts!
To get your Maidenhead Grid, look yourself up on QRZ.COM and look at the Details tab. If your at a different location, then use their awesome Gridmapper resource to find your location. It will tell you the grid! https://www.qrz.com/gridmapper QRZ will give you a highly accurate locator such as EM15ab but for the VHF Contest we just need the first 4 characters like EM15.
| ARRL | |
| Jan VHF | arrl.org/january-vhf |
| June VHF | arrl.org/june-vhf |
| Aug 222 and up | arrl.org/222-mhz-and-up-distance-contest |
| Sep VHF | arrl.org/september-vhf |
| CSVHF | |
| Spring | Central States VHF Society Spring Sprints |
| Fall | Central States VHF Society Fall Sprints |
The Radio and antenna
If you have an dual-band 2m/70cm FM hand talkie or a dual-band mobile radio all you need is a good antenna and some height. Personally I like some of the Vertical base antennas manufactured by Comet. These are tri-band antennas. During the VHF Contest I drive around with their GP-95 on my roof rack (on a fold over mount). With this antenna I can make 2m, 70cm and 23cm contacts on FM. When I’m not in a contest I relocate the antenna to my attic and use it as a base antenna.
The other thing to be mindful of is signal loss in coax. The higher the frequency the more loss that exists per 100 ft. How much loss? Well, here is a decent chart: https://www.qsradio.com/coax-and-connector-info.html Keep in mind that 6 dB of loss is about 1 S Unit. 12 dB of loss is 2 S Units. This is signal loss in the coax itself. In a game where your chasing weak signals, 2 S units can be significant, especially in FM mode. In 2024/2025 I replaced all my vehicle coax with ABR-240UF to reduce bulkiness and weight for the rover, and to speed-up assembly/disassembly. ABR Industries is based in Houston so they can manufacturer and ship to me very quickly. In the house and out to the yard I use ABR400 (PE jacket) or ABR400-UF (ultra flex).
The Operation
To operate Simplex the first thing you have to do is turn down the squelch. If possible, turn it down to where it is blocking static but not much more. If your alone in the home turn the squelch completely off and just listen to the static. If you hear voice you may be going crazy, or you may actually be hearing someone. Usually with FM you will notice the static becomes less pronounced when a weak signal is just about even or just above the static level. If you don’t hear a voice it likely means a signal is there but your radio is not sensitive enough to lock on. Frequently you will hear one side of a conversation between two people. So listen, listen, listen and then call CQ CQ.
The frequencies
| Band | FM SIMPX NA | FM SIMPX 1 | FM SIMPX 2 | FM SIMPX 3 |
| 6 M | 52.525 | 52.54 | ||
| 2 M | 146.52 | 146.49 | 146.55 | 146.58 |
| 1.25 M | 223.5 | |||
| 70 cm | 446 | |||
| 23 cm | 1294.5 |
A good base station FM Vertical antenna for 6m FM is the Ringo: https://www.dxengineering.com/parts/csh-ar6#overview
or a Comet GP-15 Tri-Band 6M/2M/70cm: https://www.dxengineering.com/parts/cma-gp-15