[W2CRA] CRA: Some Sage Advice

[William Powell]

All,

A bit of sage advice to you all:
There have been a few incidents where the Hunterdon County Public Safety dispatchers ear a ham call go out on a County
channel.  Yours truly has had this happen in the past which is why I now have a separate, fully authorized mobile
dedicated to County channels with ham as a separate zone as backup.

When programming your radio please be sure to mark all non-ham frequencies as RECEIVE ONLY!
The SOLE exception to this is if, and ONLY if, you, personally, hold a license for the non-ham frequency AND the radio
you are programming is type certified for the service class of your license.
Being a CERT, squad, fire or police officer does NOT grant you ANY rights to transmit on Public Safety channels unless
you have a WRITTEN letter of authorization of the LICENSE HOLDER specifically granting your personal use of each
licensed frequency.

Please note that there is NO prohibition to your programming in Part 90 (Public Safety) channels for RECEIVE-ONLY use.

How you program your radio for receive-only channels  is subject to the whim of each manufacturer, frequently requiring
the use of programming software specific to that radio.
Another method is to program the Part 90 channel into the receive frequency slot and an unused ham channel (simplex
please) into the transmit slot.
Failing both of the above DO NOT program the non-ham channels in at all.

You have been informed,
Bill - WB1GOT