Understanding Comms Episode 5.

[Scythe13]

This is where we get complicated....HAHA, I'm kidding. Can't believe you keep falling for that one.

Complex letters debunked: CTCSS
It stands for: Continuous Tone-Coded Squelch System

WHAT THE HELL DOES THAT MEAN?

Truth is, it's not too important. As long as you know how to use it, that's really what matters.

Remember when we were talking about frequency as in colours? We'll stick to that system for now. Imagine if you have a friend who is using a red frequency. It just so happens that there are 10 people sending a red frequency. Typical hu? How annoying. What you need is a way to cut out all the other people on the red frequency so you can only hear your friend and so that they can only hear you.

Welcome CTCSS. You turn on your radio's CTCSS function, and magic, problem solved. What this does is allow you to listen in on a specific type of red. There are loads of shades of red, so you and your friend join up and agree to work with a single specific dark red. Now that you and your friend are using the specific dark red tone, when you listen to the radio, you cut out all the other people on the red tones, except the dark red tone that you have set your radio for. So your radio will only pick up your friends specific dark red signal. Meaning, you've cut out everyone on that frequency, except those using the CTCSS function that is set to the specific dark red that you and your friend agreed on.

With CTCSS turned on, you can only hear people using that specific colour. Damn that's awesome. So you and your friend can just chat away and not worry about someone else talking to you, because man, that other person is boring!

That is CTCSS. Simple hu? It allows you to cut out other people on the same frequency (colour) except the specific coded colour (CTCSS frequency) that you've agreed.

Pretty cool hu?

We'll go into more depth on this, but once you get this basic understanding, it makes the rest very easy.

One word of note, using the example above, if someone else is listening to a general red frequency, they can hear you on your specific red CTCSS frequency. But they cannot communicate with you. To talk to you they would have to have their CTCSS function turned on to the same specific red that you have your radio set to. Not an easy task. It's time consuming, to do, so makes you feel better that you're talking to the right person.