Inhibit on carrier and single “beep” on PTT

[middleofAKTB]

On a project that I’m working on to help clean up the stepping on radio traffic And the constant open mic, I found that if you enable inhibit on carrier (with quick key override) will help to prevent the user on stepping on each other. Are there any cons to this?

also to help with users not knowing they key up the radio I know you can enable ADP encryption on hardware to get that single “beep” when you press the PTT. I understand that the radio is telling you that you’re not on an encrypted channel. We simply want it to let the user know they pressed the PTT. Are there any cons to this feature?

 

[Mr_Boh]

Have seen a couple people looking at doing the same. The downsides to the enable inhibit on carrier we found are, if you frequently have interference it can falsely inhibit (really rare and you can override) and kind of related to the former, there is training required. You need to make sure users know how they can use quick key override appropriately, which can be easy to forget it's there, or abused unnecessarily. Realistically, users will rarely if ever get into the situation where they would need to use the override.

Con to your second solution is just it's not really a supported use of the feature, so a "use at your own risk" kind of thing. Never really seen it used for "mission critical" functions. I guess the argument could be made that you are training users to know what unencrypted traffic is with a plan to go encrypted later. What I see more of instead is using something like MDC pre-id (if you are conventional) to give a real need for the pre-tone.

 

[middleofAKTB]

Have seen a couple people looking at doing the same. The downsides to the enable inhibit on carrier we found are, if you frequently have interference it can falsely inhibit (really rare and you can override) and kind of related to the former, there is training required. You need to make sure users know how they can use quick key override appropriately, which can be easy to forget it's there, or abused unnecessarily. Realistically, users will rarely if ever get into the situation where they would need to use the override.

Con to your second solution is just it's not really a supported use of the feature, so a "use at your own risk" kind of thing. Never really seen it used for "mission critical" functions. I guess the argument could be made that you are training users to know what unencrypted traffic is with a plan to go encrypted later. What I see more of instead is using something like MDC pre-id (if you are conventional) to give a real need for the pre-tone.

Yes I agree theres training required. We have slowly put them on some radios as a test trial and have had allot of success with it.

We tried to enable MDC and had it on for a very short time but the powers to be were not fans of the signal squelch that was put over the and we were also told by a couple powers to be that the repeaters couldn’t handle the MDC signal (Not sure if thats a legitimate thing) and which is why we have tested the single beep and more often than not personnel like the “beep” because it acknowledges them that they have the air. We have no plans for encryption, just seeing if by having it enabled does it gum up airtime or the signals/frequencies?

 

[KB8QDM]

I have all of my conventional radios-XTS 2500/3000/5000 and an EFJ 5300-programmed with the "In the clear" beep for one simple reason. For 15 years I've been using different trunked systems at work, LTR, Mototrbo and now ATT Firstnet, that my mind is conditioned to wait for the TPT tones before saying anything. So, on my conventional radios, I was prone to keying up and waiting, and waiting, and waiting....

 

[middleofAKTB]

I have all of my conventional radios-XTS 2500/3000/5000 and an EFJ 5300-programmed with the "In the clear" beep for one simple reason. For 15 years I've been using different trunked systems at work, LTR, Mototrbo and now ATT Firstnet, that my mind is conditioned to wait for the TPT tones before saying anything. So, on my conventional radios, I was prone to keying up and waiting, and waiting, and waiting....

Which that’s the same thought I have, “wait for the beep then transmit”.