[KYHAM] SERA Board Votes for Mandatory Tone at Summer Board Meeting

[Ron Dodson]

The SERA Board voted recently to require tone squelch (CTCSS or DCS) - 
both on transmit and receive - on all new coordinations, and on existing 
repeaters by July, 2006.

While I am sure there are many who disagree, with the number of machines 
on the air today, tone squelch is almost a necessity.  I hear people 
complaining all the time about their favorite machine being, "interfered 
with" by another repeater or a user of a distant repeater.  If you ask 
them is their favorite repeater receiving the interference operating 
equipped with tone squelche, the answer is invariably, "NO!"

I realize that many owners and trustees are reluctant to use tone 
squelch on their machines. There is always someone on an older rig or 
someone whjo just does not like the idea of TS.  Whenever the tone is 
turned on at the local machine when band opening occur, someone will 
always complain that they were barred from keying the machine or I'll 
get calls that the machine is off the air.  When you ask if they had the 
tone encode turned on for a 151.4 hz tone in their transceiver, again 
you here , "no."  Folks, tone squelch is our friend, not an enemy!

Use of tones is available at least for encode (transmission) from your 
radio on all models that were made the last many years. Most late model 
gear lets you receive and transmit using tone squelch as a factory 
standard feature. Tone can be retrofitted to the older models by using 
COMSPEC or other tone boards which are inexpensive.  If you ask around, 
you may have some give you one that they have laying around free. 

I had one man with a new state-of-the-art rig, tell me not long ago that 
he never used ANY of the 200 memories in his rig.  He tuned his 2 meter 
by VFO the same as an HF rig and had no intention of using his tone 
squelch though his rig came standard to both encode (transmit) and 
decode (receive) with tone squelch!  While this is a persoanl issue, 
many hams may have to get over it, as SERA will no longer be 
entertaining gripes of a repeater being interefence plagued, if that 
machine is not using some type of tone squelch after July, 2006.

73,
Ron, KA4MAP