When should you use VHF over UHF?
A couple of points:
When you're on the receiving end, UHF signals have a few
disadvantages over VHF signals, owing to UHF's higher
frequencies:
1) UHF transmitters tend to be less powerful than VHF
transmitters
2) Transmission lines lose appreciably more signal at UHF than
VHF, and that's just for transporting the signal from the
transmitter room to the antenna
3) UHF signals tend to get weaker more quickly than VHF signals
as they propagate outwards from their transmitters
4) UHF receivers tend to be less sensitive than VHF
receivers
UHF signals have one particular advantage over VHF signals: The
smaller wavelengths of UHF signals allow for a smaller antenna to
provide the same performance as a larger VHF antenna. Alternately,
you can make the UHF antenna larger for enhanced performance, and
it might still be small compared to a nominal VHF antenna. (Please
pardon all the vague, qualitative references.) High-performance
antennas for UHF that are not especially huge can
more-than-compensate for lower power transmitters, lossier
transmission lines, higher path-losses, and less sensitive
receivers.
Another advantage of UHF (and microwave) is that there tend to
be more frequencies available than at the lower VHF frequencies. As
technology advanced over the years, radio-spectrum habitation moved
from the lower frequencies to the higher frequencies. Necessarily,
the tendency is for lower, "older" (VHF) frequencies to be more
crowded than higher, "newer" (UHF / microwave) frequencies.
More than likely, the frequency you operate on will be
determined by the radio-communications-licensing authority in your
country (i.e., the FCC in the USA). A particular service might have
allocations available in more than one band, i.e., VHF and UHF, and
then it's up to the Engineering Department to decide which of those
legally available frequencies to chose for their system.