Squelch should apply to all RF traffic, regardless of analog or digital....
I understand what you said there, but it behaves different on a digital system and is unnecessary. If squelch is wide open on a digital system you won't hear anything, because there are not any 1s or 0s in the data stream for the decoder to work with. So you hear nothing. Once there is a valid digital signal you hear the voices. To hear any TG on a digital system is usually called promiscuous mode, but you will not hear 2 TGs at the same time in this mode, same as a minitor will not receive two freqs at the same time.
No real value to First responders, A TG is essentially the digital equivalent of one analog freq. Once the pager goes off (Unication, it stays open on the TG if programmed to do so. This mimics how the minitors stayed open so they could hear everything on the analog freq.
I don't know what scanners you have, but you will find that changing the squelch value to open for a digital system won't produce a sound. You might be able to turn up the squelch enough that the digital signal will be ignored by the scanner. If you were in an area where you think that's necessary, you would probably get better results with an attenuator.
We have hijacked this thread enough already. If you want more info I recommend creating a thread about squelch.
