A series of field trials in Auckland at 76 MHz have confirmed that propagation path loss is normally distributed and may be characterised by a fourth-power-law distance dependency. The path loss standard deviation has been found to be dependent on the mobile terminal's environment and on frequency, but is essentially independent of base station antenna height and path length. The excess path loss over plane earth predictions and the standard deviation of path loss have been measured as 14.6, 5.0, 0.8 and 1.0 dB and 6.2, 5.2, 3.7 and 5.0 dB for urban, light urban, suburban and rural environments, respectively.