VHFRadioBuff wrote:
: Hello all. I have a question. How come with some commercial radios, Tone
: Squelch only works when the mic clip is grounded, so when you remove the mic
: from the clip, it opens the receive to everything?

: I recently bought a Standard UHF radio for GMRS use and it has this, so my wife
: can listen for me without hearing other junk, but when she removes the mic
: (that I had to ground), she hears everything on the freq!

She is supposed to .. before transmitting .. how else would she (or
anyone) know if there is someone else using the frequency?

Ham radio is different .. if a repeater needs a tone for access it is to
keep distant users of a similar (or same) frequency repeater from
accessing your local repeater unintentially. It is not to keep different
users of the same repeater from hearing each other.

Many different users can access a GMRS repeater. To keep from hearing
unwanted converstations those in your "group" agree to use a specific
tone. So you only hear 'calls' from your group. But the repeater may
already be in use when your group tries to make contact. Listening without
a tone is the only way to be sure you are not interfering with another,
ongoing conversation.

To put it another way .. assuming that your HAM repeater passes tones.
Would you set up a tone with a fellow ham for use on a non-tone required
repeater? If you did, then you would not hear any other traffic on the
repater except your firend. If you didn't listen without a tone first,
before transmitting, you'll eventually end up stepping on an existing
conversation on the repeater ... and making folks really, mad at you!

Richard in Boston, MA, USA