Carrier on Prescott PD Dispatch

[N7AS]

I am in Prescott Valley and programmed Prescott PD Dispatch 155.250 in several radios to monitor including a Motorola XPR3500e. There is a continuous carrier on that frequency. I wonder if there is something here in Prescott Valley causing this?

 

[caphab1]

Coming from a radio perspective, double check the squelch settings. I'm not saying you could be wrong about an outside source affecting the freq, just a setting this often overlooked. Are you observing it on all radios/scanners etc?

 

[N7AS]

This is happening on all radios I have programmed with this frequency.

 

[N9JIG]

There are a couple things that could be happening. Since it is happening in disparate radio types it is not likely a birdie but it could be one has a runaway oscillator so turn off all other radios in the home and see if it goes away.

The first thing I would do however is to go someplace else, take a HH radio and go around the block. If it goes away then it is likely something in the house, your WiFi, a computer or even a mini-fridge (happened to me...). These days there are dozens of devices that cause interference in the average home.

If it is areawide then there are other possibilities.

If it is coming from the agency's system they could have a bad phone line or a hung-up MW link that would cause it.

155.250 was our VHF freq before I moved here and we would get interference with a dead carrier from a leaky cable TV amp in town occasionally. A call to the cable company usually got it fixed in a day or so.

 

[N7AS]

This turned out that it was local to my desk. When I move away a couple of feet, it goes away.
It could be my computer, router, TV, or cellphone. I can live with it as I can use my Bluetooth Speaker Mic and put the radio someplace else.

 

[wa8pyr]

155.250 was our VHF freq before I moved here and we would get interference with a dead carrier from a leaky cable TV amp in town occasionally. A call to the cable company usually got it fixed in a day or so.

I had a similar issue years ago when I first put my ham repeater on the air, except it was an intermittent key-up. It was tricky to find the source but I finally DFed it to a neighbor's TV preamp which had turned itself into a sweep generator. I fixed it for him and everybody was happy.

With so many people cutting the cord and going back to broadcast TV, a flaky TV preamp is another possibility.