In the UK you have to sit a prety stiff exam before you get your 2m licence, you have to know how a radio works and how to fix it if it goes out of tune and starts interfering with other bands.
For the Higher bands you have to pass a morse exam.
Regarding FM being a line of site thing, let me tell you a little story.
In the early 80s I was working for a firm that used 27 meg FM radios (CB) to comunicate from their vehicles to the factory.
Close to the factory was a village called Burtonwood. Close to the village was a large US air/army base.
I was leaving the factory late in the afternoon (4.30ish) when I heard two Americans talking as clear as day.
At first I thought it was someone on the base, then noticed there was no signal at all on the signal strenth meter.
I stopped my van short of where I was going and continued to listen to their conversation.
In the end, one of them said "OK, I've just arrived at work. I'll catch you on the way home around 3pm".
As 3pm had passed an hour and a half ago, I was gob smacked.
Were these two people going to work in the States, if they were, my calculations would have put them on the west coast timewise.
During my time working for this company, I picked up people talking in Spanish then French then English with a southern accent English with a midlands accent then Welsh then nothing. This was all in the space of 10 minutes without changing frequency.
It was as if a wave had swept across western Europe, then across the UK carrying all these transmissions. All this on a line of site FM radio with a receiveing distance of 4 miles on 4 watts.
My occupation at the Time was, an Apmospheric Propogation Engineer
figure that one out.
Sam.
