Hi, again, I have a pro-164, and I am not sure what the attenuator mode does. Is it good or bad. It says in the cryptic manual that it does some thing about centering a signal blah blah balh. Is it good or is it bad? Should I use it on all my frequencies or forget about it?
thanks as always
Mike
I think a better description of what an attenuator does is that it reduces the input sensitivity on your scanner.
Most would ask why anyone would want to do this?
Interference from strong signals close to the one you want to listen to can cause bleedover (CBs call this 'splash' and UHF/VHF calls this 'intermod'. Often this bleedover makes it all but impossible to listen to the frequency you want to listen to...
Byactivating the attenuator, you'll lower the input sensitivity, hopefully enough that you'll still hear what you want to hear, but not hear the bleedover from the adjacent frequency...
You'll only want to use the attenuator if the actual frequency you want to listen to is strong, because once you activate it, your signal will be reduced even further... I would say that your best bet is to leave it disabled on a channel-by-channel basis, as it's not usually a big problem.
Most scanners have the ability to use a hotkey to turn on the attenuator at will. If you find a strong station that's excessively noisy, try turning the attenuator on using the hotkey. If that resolves your problem, then you can program the attenuator just for that channel...
HTH
