Do I use squelch wrong or something?

[RedPenguin]

I decided, I was sick of having interference with my scanners and I wanted to try something.

Instead of have squelch set to the lowest where it doesn't allow every single channel to go through, I turned it up so that it channels don't get interfered with, and it's like I can actually hear messages on 33.7 my local fire dispatch and my fire channels do not interfere now.

I had some channels, 2 that would not give up the fight, but I just locked them out, they were not existent channels, or just testing channels in my area.

I don't know if I'm missing messages at all or not now, but at least I can hear stuff now, LoL.

I don't believe it, it's as if, at least with 33.7, my county got all new radios or something, it's an unbelievable difference, LoL.

 

[SAR923]

If you're saying that you turned the squelch down so there was more scquelch applied to overcome interference, it's neither bad or good. If you can now monitor local traffic without intereference breaking the squelch, that's good. By having more squelch, you will also miss weaker signal. The two suggestions I would make is find and eliminate the sources of interference and to get a radio with CTCSS/DTS capability so you can use that to overcome some local interference.

 

[scanfan03]

I don't know what kind of scanner you have, but you could try the ATT function.

 

[RedPenguin]

Hmmm

My radio is a BCT15.

I mean, I used to have the squelch set to 2, which is just enough not to have every single channel come in.

I turned it up to 4-5 now, and it actually lets me hear fire channels without them getting interference, when I couldn't before.

 

[SAR923]

Do you have the CTCSS tone set for this frequency? You have been asked this in several other posts and you have not answered. An easy way to get around local interference is to use squelch tones so the receiver only opens when it hears the right tone.

 

[RedPenguin]

Hmmm

My bad, I thought I did answer the question, but no the frequencies do not have the CTCSS or even DCS tones.

All of the fire frequencies in my area and some other counties have no tone either.

 

[scanfan03]

Okay, you can try turning your squelch back down and turn on the ATT for that channel so you won't get interference on that channel, but you will still have the squelch set low enough to hear farther signals.

 

[SAR923]

I don't know where you live but not having tone squelch on low band is a huge mistake. When the sunspot cycle is right, they'd be overrun with skip from all over the country. At any rate this leaves you with adjusting the squelch, using the attenuator, or tracking down and eliminating the source of the interference.