Squelch Tail Elimination (STE)

[elfaure]

Baofang radios have a feature called Squelch Tail Elimination (STE) which I assume dampens, muffles or eliminates that annoyinig mic snap at the end of transmissions. I was wondering if Uniden had any plans to integrate such a feature, which be awesome as I find that mic snap a very annoying given that could be eliminated with this noise supression implementation.

Note this feature only works between two (2) Baofang radios, not a single with a repeater nor a single with another brand of radio.

http://ham.stackexchange.com/questions/3771/how-does-the-baofeng-radio-eliminate-squelch-tail

 

[slicerwizard]

I see that you know that this feature requires cooperation between sender and receiver.

So knowing that, why would you think that Uniden could implement this in a scanner?

 

[nd5y]

The stackexcange article author partially figured it out.

Baofeng and Wouxun, and maybe other cheap chinese radios that I don't know about, don't use Motorola/GE type phase shift reverse burst squelch tail elimination.

I documented how the Chinese STE works at Baofeng UV-5R - The RadioReference Wiki

On the Chinese radios when you unkey, the the CTCSS tone changes to approximately 55 Hz for about 1/4 second before the carrier drops.
The receiver mutes whenever it detects a ~55 Hz tone (you can't dsiable this and it can cause problems).
This works even in CSQ with no CTCSS because on some models you can set the radio to send the 55 Hz STE tone independently of CTCSS.

Some AnyTone models have settings for 55.2 or 259.1 Hz in the programming software.

This isn't compatible with normal phase shift reverse burst.
It works in some cases on certain radios where the squelch closes immediately (or fast enough) when the received CTCSS is lost, that you have the "chicken burst" effect.

 

[elfaure]

I was hoping the entire radio community might adopt a standard to use like an IEEE specification for all radio manufacturers to abide by so different radios could communicate without the ST annoying mic snap. New to the hobby its one of my biggest annoyances when listening to police and fire transmissions.

 

[slicerwizard]

Traditionally, Unidens have had longer, louder squelch tails than GRE scanners, so maybe a Whistler scanner would've been a better choice for you. In an ideal world, yes, everyone would use the same scheme, but there might be patent/licensing issues at play. So Uniden would have to support all of these methods and users would have to specify which method to use on each programmed channel. And we all get to pay for the added complexity.

 

[exkalibur]

In the commercial world, there are two flavours of STE (Motorola calls it reverse burst turn off). There's generally the method Motorola uses, and "everyone else" - they're not compatible with each other, but most manufacturers will support both.

It's not a patent issue - it's Uniden being lazy.

 

[kayn1n32008]

In the commercial world, there are two flavours of STE (Motorola calls it reverse burst turn off). There's generally the method Motorola uses, and "everyone else" - they're not compatible with each other, but most manufacturers will support both.

It's not a patent issue - it's Uniden being lazy.

Motorola and the other 'not cheap garbage China radios' use either a 120 degree phase shift or a 180 degree phase shift of the PL to tell the radios the transmission is ending.

 

[elfaure]

Thank you all for your comments. I was just interested if it might be possible universally, in a perfect world.