Recently I purchased a new HT – a Yaesu VX-6R. I got this radio because of its IPX-7 rating. I plan on being involved with more activities that involve being outside in less than ideal situations including whitewater rafting and other potential wet-weather operation needs.
Plus I just wanted a “big name” HT to sit next to my Baofengs and Alinco MD5TGP DMR/2/440 ht’s.
In going through the well-written manual, one of the first things to play with is the Squelch. To access this squelch, you hit one key combination or go into the settings menu and edit #59. So I did. Basically I turned it from 0 to 1 so that the ambient atmospheric noise doesn’t kick on the speaker, but when there is any signal including RF from a simplex user or a repeater, the speaker is activated and you can hear what’s being transmitted.
Sometimes you want to temporarily cancel the squelch so that you can hear faint signals. You can hold a “monitor” button down and try to hear through the static. Since this radio has a wide-band receiver, I tuned it to 10000Hz AM and held down the monitor button to hear the familiar WWV 40 miles 360 degrees from my QTH. (WWV on 5000Hz is too strong a signal so I’d have to crank the SQL up to maybe 4 or 5 inside my house to have to push the Monitor button to hear the more clearer AM signal on my VX-6).
But there’s more.
There’s a “RF Squelch” mentioned later in the manual. That’s setting #50. What is this RF squelch and how’s it different from just good ‘ol squelch?
I asked on the LARC Hamlet Net that evening but no one seemed to know. Brian, AF0W did offer that he quickly googled it and others had a similar question but people just pointed the confused to the manual – the same one I was staring at.
Then I looked down at my Icom 7100 and remembered it has a funny squelch which I couldn’t figure out, either, except on my 7100 both squelches are controlled by the same dial. On it, as you turn the squelch knob clockwise, it goes from what they call “Noise Squelch” at around 12 o’clock, and around 2 o’clock it turns into RF squelch. This ones easier to reason about because there is a line on the S-meter that shows you when you turn the knob when you’re in RF squelch-land and where on the S-meter that corresponds to.
Extrapolating the 7100’s squelch it seems first you crank up Noise Squelch and if that’s not enough then you specify a minimum RF Signal strength an bona-fide signal (as opposed to just noise) needs to be in order to fire up your speaker. You can’t and don’t use both squelches (is that even a word?) at the same time, its either Noise squelch or RF squelch that’s active.
But these are distinct settings (#50 and #59) on the Yaesu and #59 is so important, there’s a shortcut to it along with a dedicated button to defeat it temporarily. Does one override the other? Can or do you use both at the same time? Do you use both for the same situation? Is Icom’s system different than Yaesu’s system?
So I googled more and will experiment more on known good, strong repeaters near me with an extra radio on-hand to see what happens when I futz with 1 or both squelches on the Yaesu VX-6R.
More to come…
73,
ae0rs
