Scanning out the digital noise

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greedo24

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Jul 7, 2012
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Southwest Michigan
Hello all:

I have been scanning for a few years now on a couple of Icom HT's that I have. On the UHF one, and sometimes on the VHF one, I get bursts of digital noise. So I have a couple of questions about how to avoid this. A) If I were to buy a digital scanner, does that necessarily mean that most of the digital noise will magically be transformed into audio? (I know it won't decode TRBO) B) I know I can set a CTCSS associated with a certain frequency, but does that mean that it would also block unwanted incoming signals? I thought it only meant that when you transmit that it would get you into whatever repeater you were going for.

Thanks in advance.

Greedo
 

jfhtm350

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Dec 25, 2010
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1,107
Location
New Market TN
If you can program in the PL or DC code then it will eliminate any surrounding county using the same frequency or even a close frequency bleeding over. Those codes are broadcast from the repeater the entire time someone is transmitting. PL is broadcast as an analog sound and DC is broadcast digitally, while still using analog voice. They are also broadcast from the mobiles using the repeaters on the input frequency. Keep in mind that sometimes there are no PL or DC tones broadcasted. Even if you have a digital scanner, you are still likely to hear digital noise because of the types of digital they cannot decode. I hear them all the time when I search and there are alot of them with my digital scanner and I am in the country.

It sounds like you need a scanner that will decode PL or DC tones from what you describe. The P25 digital version of the tones are called NAC codes in case you decide to just buy a digital scanner while your in the buying mood.
 

greedo24

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Joined
Jul 7, 2012
Messages
35
Location
Southwest Michigan
Thank you for your response, jfhtm350! I will see if I can program my scanners as you suggested, and I will let you all know the results.

-Greedo
 
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