Everyone can remember when they were kids and their first experience with two way radios at a play ground or a friends house. What is it about radio communication that is so special? No one is quite sure but for the actual inventors of the technology that experienced it for the first time, the experience must have seemed close to magical. For adults though, radio communication is usually far more utilitarian and their use of two way radios is governed by numerous rules and regulations.

What Do They Mean?

This is why any conversation about two way radios and the use of them will always be interlaced with abbreviated terms, such as UHF, CB, VHF and FCC. All of these abreactions and many more just like them all mean something that pertains to two way radios and their usage. For instance, FCC stands for “Federal Communications Commission”, which is the federal agency that oversee all communications on public airwaves.

Some are Slower and Some are Faster

UHF and VHF both refer to the frequency of radio waves. VHF is the abbreviation for “very high frequency” and UHF stands for “ultra high frequency”. If you were to hold a long piece of string at each end and wiggle it gently it would adulate in such a way as to create long smooth visible waves that passed by slowly or “infrequently”. Now agitate you hands aggressively and you produce shorter waves that contain more energy in them that move at a quicker rate or more “frequently”.

Take a Look for Yourself

This describes exactly how radio waves move through the air, only instead of moving in a straight line like the waves on a string do, radio waves move in all directions. To get a much better, but still not yet completely accurate view if how radio waves move through the air, simply throw a stone into a body of calm water and watch the waves move outward away from the stones place of impact.