🏔️ Radio horizon & line of sight
Two antenna heights → how far VHF/UHF or a mesh node can reach before the earth gets in the way.
Antenna heights above the ground between you
Line-of-sight distance
- You can reach
- 3.5 mi
- radio horizon · optical 3.0 mi
- They can reach
- 11.0 mi
- radio horizon · optical 9.5 mi
- Max line-of-sight path
- 14.4 mi
- flat earth between you
- 60% Fresnel clearance
- 214.9 ft
- full zone 358.1 ft at mid-path
VHF/UHF, Meshtastic and MeshCore are all line-of-sight bands - height beats power every time. Doubling your height buys ~41% more horizon; doubling power buys nothing if the hill is in the way. This is the flat-earth-plus-refraction number: it tells you the most two antennas could ever reach, not whether a ridge sits between them. For a real path profile with terrain, use a free coverage tool such as HeyWhatsThat or Radio Mobile. A repeater’s listing page here shows its antenna height when we have it - that’s the number for the second box.