This weekend I had the opportunity to change some settings in my HT (hams call them “Handy-Talkies” – normal people call them hand held ham radios).  I normally used my “HT” to scan Green Bay and Appleton, WI area repeaters on one side of the radio while listening to an AM broadcast news broadcast on the other side of the radio.  If I heard the radio stop on a repeater conversation, I’d switch to VFO mode and listen until it was over.  I hadn’t really used all the capability of the scan feature of the radio since I did a quick manual switch to VFO mode on signal acquisition.

Scroll three years later.  A new wife.  A new house.  A new dog.  And new potty walks with the dog.  We take the HT along as it is always interesting to listen to some of the local hams.  And the ham radio has a police scanner built into it.  But there was a problem.  I didn’t understand why right away, but the radio would hear a police call, stop scanning to listen to it, and then resume scanning before the conversation was completed.  I had thought that there might have been something wrong with the radio.  Or maybe some interference blocking the signal?  A weak battery?  Yada yada yada…

A quick tour of the menu settings found the answer.  There was one menu option to set the scan resume mode.  It could be set to be based on time, carrier drop or one other setting.  It was set on time.  I remember when I first saw that, I thought it would work like this.  The radio scans.  It hears a signal.  It stops to listen.  I listens until the carrier drops.  Then a timer stops, and after some set time it resumes scanning.  Guess I was wrong.  It only listened for a preset amount of time upon signal acquisition – then resumed scanning.

A quick change of the setting to “carrier drop” produced the desired result.  Now the radio operates as one would expect and as described in the first scenario above.  Very nice to listen to!

It’s interesting how our use of a set of equipment can change over time and how we can adapt the equipment for that new use.  I encourage everyone to take a quick trip through the menu settings of their radios.  You might be surprised what you might find that could add to your radio enjoyment…

Stay radio active!

Jon Kreski, AB9NN

http://www.HamRadioResources.com

http://www.Twitter.com/AB9NN