Roger beep settings

[WRYZ926]

I normally don't turn on the Roger beep but I will on occasion just to aggravate friends that don't like it.

[OffRoaderX]

52 minutes ago, WRYZ926 said:

I normally don't turn on the Roger beep but I will on occasion just to aggravate friends that don't like it.

They do not sound like friends.

[WRYZ926]

4 minutes ago, OffRoaderX said:

They do not sound like friends.

Actually they are very good friends and we like to give each other trouble at every opportunity 

[WQAI363]

I don't mind Roger Beeps, but those call-tones can be annoying at times. 

[73blazer]

I was admonished today for using a roger beep on a repeater. "the repeater already has it, please turn that off".

I normally have it off as it's not good when hunting, or even just being out in the woods talking with my wife, it's rather annoying. But I thought it was "common" when talking on repeaters. Apparently not.

[WRQC527]

Roger beeps are like opinions about roger beeps. Lots of people have them, but not everyone wants to hear them. You kinda need to read the room. If you're on a repeater and no one wants to hear them, maybe turn it off. If no one cares, don't worry about it.

[H8SPVMT]

C'mon, Roger Beeps are like naked people lurking in the shadows as you travel down the highway.  You never get to see a pretty one and only the ugly, un-interesting parts are exposed!

And they cause the same people to scream at a volume and tone that no one listening wants to endure for even a minute.

[nokones]

On 5/7/2022 at 7:52 AM, WRPP915 said:

I don't use a roger beep but I don't care if you do. I have heard many tell others to turn theirs off for what ever reason. It usually comes from someone with a Motorola radio with their obnoxious tone they generate when the mic is un-keyed,kind of likea roger beep, at least it server the same purpose. I guess they like everyone to know they are using a Motorola radio I suspect.

More and more repeater owners are starting to require their users to identify and/or get repeater access by utilizing the MDC1200 PT-T feature to control the access to their repeaters. So, better get use to the squawking.

[wrci350]

40 minutes ago, nokones said:

More and more repeater owners are starting to require their users to identify and/or get repeater access by utilizing the MDC1200 PT-T feature to control the access to their repeaters.

Interesting.  Which GMRS type-accepted radios do MDC1200?

[Lscott]

2 hours ago, wrci350 said:

Interesting.  Which GMRS type-accepted radios do MDC1200?

A GMRS radio is "certified", the new term, under Part 95E. There are some older commercial radios that have Part 95 certification and are legal to use so long as they are programmed with the correct frequencies, bandwidth and power.

One such example is attached. The radio is both analog FM and digital enabled for P25 Phase 1, however digital is not allowed under current FCC GMRS rules so that part can't be used. Other than that the analog section is just fine, and as you can see in the brochure it does MDC1200.

You can verify the certification by looking at the bottom of the brochure for they type one UHF radio and referencing the FCC ID. Then compare it to the one in the FCC grant. Part 95A was the GMRS rules section before the FCC reorganized Part 95 in 2017. The radio still retains it's certification.

I personally have a few of these radios in my collection.

TK-5220_5320 Brochure - 1.pdf TK-5320 FCC Grant - 1.pdf

[Raybestos]

Back in the 1960's, a lot of old Motorola, GE, and similar land mobile radios had a squelch tail, which was about a half-second of open squelch (white noise) you heard when a received station quit transmitting, before the squelch closed and silenced the receiver.  As a kid, I always enjoyed the traffic and squelch tails when the city cop with a (then) new Motorola HT-200 came in the drug store with his radio blaring.  Even now, in my old age, I enjoy the sound of the squelch tails on ham, GMRS, commercial, etc, FM radio systems.  As then, it let you know that the transmission of the receive station ended.

Somewhere along the line, land mobile radio companies decided that the squelch tail was annoying and should be eliminated.  Various technical solutions were employed to make the squelch tail go away, to include Motorola's "reverse burst" which inverted or otherwise altered the PL tone for a split second when a transmitter unkeyed.  Over time, mainly on ham, then later FRS and GMRS, plus land mobile, radio companies added the "courtesy tone" or as CB'ers called it  the roger beep, to let people know a transmission had ended.

We went full circle, from eliminating a naturally occurring cue that a received station had ceased transmitting, to creating a beep or other tone to do the same, generated internally by the radio.

Some ham, land mobile, and GMRS, radios have settings that enhance the probability that the radio will create a squelch tail while transmitting (or receiving).  I usually have those settings adjusted to do so on my radios.  I always wondered how popular a "courtesy tone" setting (transmit and/or receive) would be that sounded like a squelch tail, if manufacturers included that as an option, along with the more well known beeps.

[Lscott]

22 minutes ago, RayP said:

Somewhere along the line, land mobile radio companies decided that the squelch tail was annoying and should be eliminated.  Various technical solutions were employed to make the squelch tail go away, to include Motorola's "reverse burst" which inverted or otherwise altered the PL tone for a split second when a transmitter unkeyed. 

Just as a side note I read why it's a reverse phase.

The old equipment used a vibrating reed as a filter to open the squelch. This was a mechanical filter basically. The reed was "tuned" to the desired PL frequency. When the transmission stopped it took a bit of time for the reed to stop vibrating and the squelch to close.

The reverse phase, same PL frequency, was sent at the end of the transmission which bucked the reed's vibration which quickly cased it to damp out and stop. Thus the squelch would close faster mostly eliminating the squelch tail. 

[SteveShannon]

3 minutes ago, Lscott said:

The reverse phase, same PL frequency, was sent at the end of the transmission which bucked the reed's vibration which quickly cased it to damp out and stop. Thus the squelch would close faster mostly eliminating the squelch tail. 

How did they get the timing right?

[WRXB215]

2 minutes ago, Sshannon said:

How did they get the timing right?

That thought entered my head as well then I thought it would probably be a lot harder to hit it dead on and keep it going that to be off a little and dampen it.

PS I'm no sound engineer, but I do play one on TV.

[Lscott]

1 minute ago, Sshannon said:

How did they get the timing right?

 

If the squelch tone was sent continuously during the transmission, reed stays sync'd, by inverting the signal at the end would generate a 180 phase shift bucking the original one.

How it's done now I don't know. Everything is done by micro's now with the magic in the software.

[SteveShannon]

1 minute ago, Lscott said:

 

If the squelch tone was sent continuously during the transmission, reed stays sync'd, by inverting the signal at the end would generate a 180 phase shift bucking the original one.

How it's done now I don't know. Everything is done by micro's now with the magic in the software.

Thanks!  That helps. Of course they probably don’t use reed switches anymore anyway so matching a mechanical vibration isn’t necessary. 

[wrci350]

1 hour ago, Lscott said:

A GMRS radio is "certified", the new term, under Part 95E. There are some older commercial radios that have Part 95 certification and are legal to use so long as they are programmed with the correct frequencies, bandwidth and power.

The short answer is, "There are no currently-produced 'certified' GMRS radios that have MDC1200".  Would you not agree?

[Lscott]

40 minutes ago, wrci350 said:

The short answer is, "There are no currently-produced 'certified' GMRS radios that have MDC1200".  Would you not agree?

That's likely true. Myself I don't know of any.

Those repeater owners that use MDC1200 tend to get labeled as Motorola snobs since that company originally had the patent on the signaling method. It mostly limited the repeater access to users with Motorola radios.

[wrci350]

16 minutes ago, Lscott said:

Those repeater owners that use MDC1200 tend to get labeled as Motorola snobs since that company originally had the patent on the signaling method. It mostly limited the repeater access to users with Motorola radios.

Yeah that's what I was thinking.  I know around here there are a bunch of folks using Motorola radios, which probably aren't Part 95 certified, on the GMRS repeaters.  You can always tell by that nice Motorola "burst" at the end of their transmissions.  

[Lscott]

17 minutes ago, wrci350 said:

Yeah that's what I was thinking.  I know around here there are a bunch of folks using Motorola radios, which probably aren't Part 95 certified, on the GMRS repeaters.  You can always tell by that nice Motorola "burst" at the end of their transmissions.  

It doesn't really serve a useful purpose in GMRS without the special equipment, but does identify one as a Motorola radio user much like the white strip down the back of a sunk.

[WRXB215]

1 hour ago, Lscott said:

the white strip down the back of a sunk

I thought those were racing stripes. 

[Lscott]

35 minutes ago, WRXB215 said:

I thought those were racing stripes. 

Yup. You "race" away as fast as you can from the black squirrel with the white strip on its back, not towards it.

[nokones]

5 hours ago, Lscott said:

Just as a side note I read why it's a reverse phase.

The old equipment used a vibrating reed as a filter to open the squelch. This was a mechanical filter basically. The reed was "tuned" to the desired PL frequency. When the transmission stopped it took a bit of time for the reed to stop vibrating and the squelch to close.

The reverse phase, same PL frequency, was sent at the end of the transmission which bucked the reed's vibration which quickly cased it to damp out and stop. Thus the squelch would close faster mostly eliminating the squelch tail. 

That would be the Vibrasponder Reed, the bigger Reed of the two reeds.

[nokones]

8 hours ago, wrci350 said:

Interesting.  Which GMRS type-accepted radios do MDC1200?

I don't know. I don't own a non-type accepted GMRS radio. All my radios are Motorola mobiles and portables and one Kenwood mobile. Oh, I forgot, I do own a Midland MXT500 which I never have used.

[Lscott]

26 minutes ago, nokones said:

That would be the Vibrasponder Reed, the bigger Reed of the two reeds.

Thanks. I found some info on those now that I have a name for it.

https://www.motorolasolutions.com/content/dam/msi/docs/en-xw/static_files/Related_-_Vibrasender_and_Vibrasponder_devices.pdf