Hi Scan and all,
"I guess it also prevents possible misuse of the radio if someone tries to impersonate. "Tango 45 this is Tango Control" type of mischief won't be possible."
Anything is possible but the fool gets caught sooner or later since there are a number of ways to trace the radio and it's location. Sorry, but most are just a bit beyond the scope of this discussion.
"What if the set gets stolen though?"
Same thing, most have a unit ID so they know which unit is transmitting and in systems employing repeaters with remote receivers the area can be found very quickly and easily as someone has already stated. To pinpoint the location inside or out of the primary coverage area direction finding mobiles are used, privately or by the FCC.
Between us we've covered the common ways of locating a radio transmitter so here's a short story of one of my personal experiences just to illustrate one. A long time ago in a police department far away before unit ID was invented a company I was a technical consultant for called me in to locate the source of jamming on a repeater system. Being a remote repeater located in a closet in an untraveled area of an industrial site I was elected to monitor the voter (punny but not funny to me at least). For a week of late nights running I kept a log of which receiver was picking up the music and nonsense, then I submitted it to the Watch Commander for comparison to the multi track tape that records and time/date stamps all radio and telephone communications. Naturally they matched and with this evidence they took appropriate action against the officer responsible. This guy was a screwup from the git go and after a few more stupid stunts he was terminated.
There are eight million stories in The Naked City and this has been one of them. Tune in again for next week's episode, Hitler Bites The Dust. (Yeah, that's what he called himself and he went down HARD!)
