Soliloquy .. .

^ Pittsburgh, my city of residence, has deigned to use the
^ same tone on virtually all their 12 active police channels.

^ Was this very bright for the police radios to have been
^ configured so that the tones are identical on so many
^ frequencies, is there a reason for this?

It isn't un-bright. They probably did it that way out of convenience, or
perhaps through local area coordination. In their application I can't see
that using the same tone on all their frequencies would be a problem. Their
radios aren't designed to receive a wide range of frequencies as your
"wide-range radio receiver" is (I don't like the term scanner), so they
probably don't have the trouble that you are. Their traffic is separated
through frequency channelization so they probably use a CTCSS tone only to
avoid confusion from distant stations on the same frequency and, perhaps, to
make jamming slightly more difficult.

Frank

"Frank" wrote in
news:01c3910f$6b160cd0$0125250a@lxzumthvplpcztmv:


Thanks for the well said reply. I suspected that might be the case.

Do you know anything of Motorola Handhelds, I believe it's an HT-100?

Though it would be more capable, I believe, in listening to the
Pittsburgh Police, I would need to be assured that there was a Transmit
block available. I would not want to posses a radio that other could
inadvertently or intentionally JAM police calls. I suspect that there is
no block available, so I have avoided additional interest in the radio.
It is in the UHF range, originally very near the frequencies I need for
listening to the police. Also, it requires special programming software,
which I don't have.

Regards.


Soliloquy .. .

^ Pittsburgh, my city of residence, has deigned to use the
^ same tone on virtually all their 12 active police channels.

^ Was this very bright for the police radios to have been
^ configured so that the tones are identical on so many
^ frequencies, is there a reason for this?

It isn't un-bright. They probably did it that way out of convenience,
or perhaps through local area coordination. In their application I
can't see that using the same tone on all their frequencies would be a
problem. Their radios aren't designed to receive a wide range of
frequencies as your "wide-range radio receiver" is (I don't like the
term scanner), so they probably don't have the trouble that you are.
Their traffic is separated through frequency channelization so they
probably use a CTCSS tone only to avoid confusion from distant
stations on the same frequency and, perhaps, to make jamming slightly
more difficult.

Frank



--
Never say never.
Nothing is absolute.

Soliloquy .. .

^ Do you know anything of Motorola Handhelds, I believe it's
^ an HT-100?

The only Motorola I'm familiar with is the Motorola Saber. The software
permitted a great deal of control over assignments to each channel, including
the PL, power output, squelch level, etc. With the Saber you would be able to
assign the lowest power level to the channels you didn't want to transmit on.
I'm not certain I remember correctly (it's been 10 years) but it might also
permit assigning receive-only channels.

If the HT-100 is newer than the Saber it might have those abilities plus
more.

The Saber also required a programming interface, which consisted of a black
box with a switch on top, a lead to the computer's RS232 port and another to
the radio, and electronic components and a 9VDC battery inside.

Frank