Baffled by Attenuator

[kingzogofalbania]

I know there have been Attenuator questions but I remain puzzled by it all. The manual deals with it (for me) in away that it assumes you already know this stuiff.

What does attenuating mean? What does the attenuator do? I gather it's something to do with rejecting or accepting certain freqs.

I have a GRE psr- 800 ... and live in a large city (Toronto) ... so what should my ATT settings be?
Thanks so much in advance.

 

[TampaTyron]

An attenuator simply "attenuates" the received rf signal. Attenuate means reducing in strength. Sunglasses are attenuators. Hearing protection (muffs or foam ear plugs) are attenuators. That feature in a scanner reduces its sensitivity to signals, which typically helps with a very stong signal causing the scanner to go deaf to other, less powerful signals. TT

 

[K9WG]

Not sure about the PSR800 but the 500/600 has two attenuator settings.

Global - everything is attenuated
Object specific - each object (channel) can be set independently