Our very effective national mountain rescue radio system essentially operates when transmitting and receiving on ‘Line of sight’ principles, ie in simple terms if the aerial of one handset / base set / vehicle set can ‘see’ another one then transmission and reception between the two (And more) is possible. (Even over quite large distances)

In reality hills and mountains, dales and valleys ‘get in the way.’ and so we have to use radio links, where messages are passed between sets that have such ‘Line of sight’ coverage (Which sometimes becomes a sort of Chinese Whispers affair)

To get around this problem, various devices can be employed whose workings are seemingly known only to team ‘Radio Officers,’ but to the average mountain rescue team member means that communications are not reliant on line of sight principles.

The Bolton MRT would like to extend its thanks to our colleagues at Bowland Pennine MRT who have placed into operation a number of prominently hill top sited radio repeater units within their team area to improve their radio communications coverage, and who have kindly placed at our use (Joint with BPMRT) their repeater sited on Winter Hill.

As of this evening, following various trials within the Bolton MRT team area, we have now gone operational with our use of this repeater, with thanks to Bowland Pennine MRT.

This now means that on operational call outs, we have the ability to pass radio messages between all our members / radio hand sets / vehicle sets, thereby greatly enhancing our radio communications coverage and useage.