Analogue Radio Systems

Communication Solutions August 27, 2026 TechnoRF

Analogue PMR remains a valid and economical choice for small teams needing straightforward voice coordination on one or two channels. TechnoRF supplies, licenses, installs and services analogue systems, and states plainly where analogue stops being the right answer and digital begins.

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Details

Analogue radio has been in continuous professional use for decades and remains the right answer for a defined class of site. It is also frequently sold where it is no longer the right answer. Both facts are worth stating plainly.

Where analogue is still correct

A single team of roughly ten to thirty people
One or two channels of traffic — everyone hears everyone
Straightforward coverage: one site, no deep basements, no long tunnels
No requirement for data, position reporting or call recording
Rapid deployment matters more than long-term feature growth

Hotels, small manufacturing sites, security teams on a single property, event operations, construction sites in their early phases and service organisations all fit this profile. For them, digital adds cost and features that will not be used.

Where it stops being correct

Analogue and digital audio at the edge of range Analogue audio degrades gradually into noise with distance, and the user keeps understanding it with effort. Digital audio stays clean across the coverage area and then stops abruptly once the error rate crosses a threshold. That is why measuring the coverage boundary matters more on a digital system than on an analogue one. Two curves. The analogue curve descends steadily with distance. The digital curve stays high and flat up to a certain distance, then falls steeply.

Analogue voice degrades continuously with distance. The signal weakens, noise grows, and speech becomes progressively harder to understand well before it becomes impossible. Digital receivers reconstruct the bit stream and hold voice quality flat almost to the coverage edge — a difference that matters most in exactly the conditions where a message is urgent.

The other three limits are structural rather than gradual:

Requirement	Analogue	What it needs instead
Two conversations at once on one channel	Not possible	DMR two-slot TDMA
Knowing who called, or calling one person	Not possible	Digital individual calling
Position, text, telemetry	Not possible	Digital data services
Lone worker and man-down alarms	Limited, unreliable	Digital, with acknowledgement
Disabling a lost radio	Not possible	Digital remote disable

When a site needs any of these, adding analogue equipment does not help. That is the point at which the conversation becomes a migration plan.

Getting analogue right

Where analogue is correct, most of the performance comes from installation rather than from the radio:

Antenna choice and height. A repeater antenna twelve metres higher usually outperforms a repeater with twice the transmit power. The radio horizon is roughly 4.12 × √height in metres.
Feeder quality and length. A long run of thin coaxial cable can discard more signal than the power amplifier produces.
Correct frequency and CTCSS planning. A shared frequency with no tone squelch means the team hears every other user in the district.
A licence. Professional frequencies require BTK authorisation under Law No. 5809. The only exemption is PMR446-class equipment inside defined power and antenna limits.

VHF and UHF: what wavelength changes VHF has a wavelength of about 2 metres, UHF about 70 centimetres. The longer wave travels over and around obstacles better in open terrain; the shorter wave passes more readily through the doorways, windows and corridors inside a building. Open ground therefore favours VHF, and building interiors favour UHF. On the left, open terrain: the VHF wave travels a long distance over the hills. On the right, a multi-storey building: the UHF wave reaches the interior through floors and corridors, while VHF is largely attenuated at the outer wall.

Service

Analogue equipment is repairable and long-lived, which is part of its appeal. TechnoRF handles programming, antenna and feeder replacement, repeater maintenance, battery renewal and licence administration for analogue estates, including ones we did not originally supply. Get in touch.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is analogue obsolete?

No, but its range of correct application has narrowed. For a team of ten to thirty people sharing one channel, on a site where coverage is straightforward, analogue is simpler, cheaper and entirely adequate. What it cannot do is carry more than one conversation per channel, transmit data or position, identify who is calling, or be centrally managed — and those limits arrive quickly as an operation grows.

VHF or UHF — which should we choose?

Neither answer is universal. VHF, around 136–174 MHz, travels further over open ground and follows terrain better, which suits agriculture, forestry and coastal work. UHF, around 400–470 MHz, penetrates buildings and reflects around structures far more effectively, which suits factories, hospitals, hotels and dense urban sites. Where the same fleet works both, the answer is usually a repeater and a coverage study rather than a band change.

When do we need a repeater?

When users at opposite ends of the site can no longer hear each other radio to radio. A handportable transmitting a few watts from body height reaches perhaps one to two kilometres in the open and far less among buildings. A repeater on a high point receives on one frequency and retransmits on another, extending that to the whole site — it requires a licensed frequency pair and an antenna position, not merely a device.

Can we migrate from analogue to digital later?

Yes, and it is worth planning for at purchase. Most Hytera DMR repeaters and radios support mixed mode, carrying analogue and digital traffic on the same channel, so departments move across in stages. Antennas, feeder, masts and power are reused; the licensed frequency remains the same. What is not reusable is the analogue-only radio fleet.

Author

TechnoRF

Hytera Distributor and Authorised Technical Service in Turkey

TechnoRF supplies, installs, programmes and maintains professional radio systems for corporate and public sector organisations across Turkey.

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