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Right, time for lesson 4.

Lesson 3 was complicated, apparently. But this should bring it all together so that you have a near full understanding of basic comms style stuff.

Okay, so here goes.

Your radio has 5 components and a battery. You can send and receive messages on different frequencies (think different colours).

Now it goes super tech! You can change the settings of the transmitter and receiver to pick up different frequencies (colours). Okay, that wasn't really that tech.

If your friend is transmitting out a red signal, you change your radio's receiver to pick up red signal and listen to them.

This is the basic principle of tuning your radio.

If your radio listens to one frequency, you can change that frequency and listen to other people's transmissions. This means you can have one radio and use that to listen to many different people.

We'll do a quick bit of tech now. Instead of colours, we'll add a number value to the frequency. If you can get used to the number value idea, the understanding of a radio is much easier. But we'll keep the colours so you can understand, even if you hate numbers. Just remember, the colours are just put in as a way to understand the concept of frequencies and how they work.

This is our example.

Your radio is set to 500mHz (we'll call this Green).

SD's radio is set to 510mHz (Blue)
HL's radio is set to 520mHz (yellow)
Beardyman's radio is set to 530mHz (red)

To listen to SD's messages, you need to change your radio from 500mHz (Green), to 510mHz (Blue). So you change the settings of the transmitter and receiver to 510mHz (Blue). Now you can message SD and speak to him.

To listen to HL's messages and message him back, you have to change your radio to 520mHz (Yellow).

For Beardyman, you need to be at 530mHz (red).

What is this mHz that I speak about? MegaHertz. It's a measurement of frequency. There are LOADS of frequencies around. We are only using these numbers as basic ideas to understand the concept. The numbers and colour are not accurate to real life, they are random numbers and colours, just used to better explain how frequencies work.

If you are listening for SD on his 510mHz (Blue) and you're on the wrong frequency (colour), you'll not be able to hear him.

To hear 510mHz (Blue), you have to have your radio set to 510mHz (Blue). To listen to 520mHz (yellow) you have to have your radio set to 520mHz.

If you add this to the second and third lessons, then you now understand frequencies as much as you need to. Once you have this, you honestly have a HUGE amount of understanding of what people talk about with their tech speak.

Next up we'll be looking more at the cool features of radios, and looking at more tech stuff made simpler than this.

So, if someone says "My radio is set to 449.125" it just means, "This is the frequency (colour) I'm transmitting and receiving on. If you want to listen to me and speak to me, you need to set your radio to the same frequency (the same colour) as mine (which is 449.125mHz, in this example)".

I hope I have removed the scarey numbers from Comms for a lot of people.

When you're given a chart of a million codes with 6 digit numbers, and mHz and the alike, just think of it as being the frequency (colour) you need to set your radio to so that you can listen to them.

Magic.
Some people may complain I'm being pedantic but the units really do matter

mHz (lower case m) is milli-Hertz one one-thousandth of a Hz
MHz (upper case M) is Megga-Hertz one million Hz

Radios operate in and around the MHz ranges not the mHz ranges.