Using Arild's height's the range is 27 miles. There are frequent skips in the VHF range. I have seen some of over 600 miles (I picked up a Navy ship talking to a sailboat--since I could not see any navy vessels, I asked his lat and lon--got a disance over 600 miles away) Occassionally in the Gulf I will get CG stations 400 miles away. There are a number of types of skip in this band wave. This is most likely atmospheric ducting. E skip can be from 400 to thousands of miles--and occurs in the late spring to summer months and also can occur in this band width. The two meter ham band is just adjacent to the marine VHF band and these distances (and longer) are seen with 2 meters also. With 2 meters amps or high output is not unusual. It makes some difference when punching thru interference, but the above distances were with 25 watts output and a 3 dB gain antenna. Remember that many of the satellite radios are very low wattage. The higher wattage will override other transmissions and can give problems in hearing emergency traffic. The FCC limits Marine VHF to 25 watts. Two meter amps are readily available up to 300 watts and occasionally used on vessels, but not in US waters. (the question arises if a vessel in foreign waters is subject to FCC rules--my understanding is that it is). Most of HF radio, to include the short wave radio stations is via skips--atmospheric bounce and this explaination is very simplified. Bob Austin