What is pl? And what do I do with it?

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bballjh

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Noob question I know. I know kind of what it is from the wiki but I don't know what it IS or what I do with it in terms of my pro-97 as in programming it in if that is what you do. Now stop laughing at me and help me out!
 

poltergeisty

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squelch

Two entities are using the same frequency, but you only want to hear A not B. Sense A uses a PL of 100 hz and B uses a PL 131.8 of CTCSS, this will allow you to hear only A.

So you can have two programmed channels. One for A and on for B. That way you won't hear both talking at the same time. Particular useful in metropolitan areas where the same frequency may be used by more than one license holder.
 
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mciupa

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It is a way of keeping distinct comm's separate on a commonly allocated channel.

Let's look at your Thurston Co. Olympia Fire Tact on 154.3700 . It has a PL of 88.5
But since 154.3700 is used by a lot of agencies there would be interference so they use a "coded squelch" with different tones. A fire agency maybe 40 miles away may use 154.37 with 136.5 PL and they won't interfere with Olympia.
When you are scanning with your Pro 97, and you see a PL suddenly pop up , hit the ENT key to program it in. It may show up as CTCSS or DCS , depending on what they use.
 

RayAir

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I read it and understand it now but is there anything I do on my pro-97 relating to it? I can set it to code search and it displays the PL but that is about it. Can't see any function other than that


What exactly do you want to do with it??
 

JnglMassiv

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Noob question I know. I know kind of what it is from the wiki but I don't know what it IS or what I do with it in terms of my pro-97 as in programming it in if that is what you do. Now stop laughing at me and help me out!
Great question. PL is short for Private Line which is Motorola's term for CTCSS (continuous tone coded squelch signal).
http://wiki.radioreference.com/index.php/CTCSS

Basically, it adds a second criteria to your normal squelch. If the PL is not present on a received channel programmed for it, you hear no audio. The device may then scan to the next channel. This is useful to both users and scannists in crowded urban and suburban regions with hundreds of agenecies in range of each other.
 

gmclam

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PL is a trademarked term for "Private Line". The generic term it CTCSS, or CT for short. There are a few uses for this on a PRO-97. What happens around here is that there will me multiple agencies on the same frequency. The only way to tell them apart is by their CT/DC value. If you want to have the correct alpha tag display, you want to program each frequency/CT combination.
Example:
154.100 131.8 Agency A
154.100 179.9 Agency B

The California Highway Patrol (among many others) are on low band VHF. I typically get quite a bit of atmospheric noise on those frequencies and must set my squelch a little higher than I want to keep from just hearing noise (when no one is transmitting). One way to overcome this situation is to also program a CT/DC value. In that case, the squelch will not open unless there is BOTH a carrier and the correct CT/DC value is received.

Also regarding the CHP, they tend to reuse frequencies and often rename them in the process. So I have the following:
42.120 179.9 GOLD Base
42.120 131.8 BRONZE Base

I hope this helps the understanding a bit.
 

bballjh

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Thank you everyone! Such a helpful community. Should I have asked this question on another site I would have been called a dumb a**
 
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