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Using a Radio: Button by Button

A radio nobody can work is no better than no radio. This guide is about the equipment: which knob does what, how to put a channel in, what squelch is, what a "privacy code" really does, how to work a repeater, and how to fill a radio with channels from a computer while there is still internet. It assumes you have never used a radio.

The rest is in two other guides: which service to use, licences, antennas, range and how to call for help in the Emergency radio guide; texting radio to radio in the Mesh radio guide.

The books behind it are in Southern-Oregon\Comms-Signals\Radio-Operating: the federal fire crews' own radio course (NIRSC training), the DHS field guide with its tone tables, and the FCC's rules (Part 95, Part 97); the Army's FM 24-18 is in Southern-Oregon\Electronics-Repair\. Button-by-button detail is in no book here; those lines say (rule of thumb).

The short version

• Antenna on before you ever press transmit. "Never operate the transmitter without the antenna attached" (FM 24-18, p. 111).
• Every radio has the same six controls: on/off and volume, squelch, channel or frequency, the transmit button, power level, and the antenna.
• Squelch is the hiss gate. Too tight and you hear nothing — including the weak call you were waiting for (NIRSC, p. 24).
• A "privacy code" makes nothing private. It only keeps your own speaker quiet.
• Do the computer part now, while there is internet: the free CHIRP program, a cable you have tested, your channels in every radio, and a printed card.
• Save your own radio's manual onto the drive. Models differ, and no general guide can give you your radio's menu numbers.

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1. Every radio has the same six controls

A $25 handheld, a ham base station, a truck CB and a weather radio all have the same six things. Makers hide them in different places, but there are only six.

Control	What it does	What goes wrong
On/off and volume	Power, and how loud the speaker is	Volume set in silence, so you can't tell it is working
Squelch	Cuts the hiss when nobody is talking	Too tight: silence, even when someone calls. Too loose: hiss all day
Channel or frequency	Which conversation you are on	Both radios must be on the same one, set the same way
Transmit (the PTT)	Hold to talk, let go to listen	You are deaf while you hold it; the first word is often cut off
Power: high or low	How hard it shouts	High power on a weak battery; low power when you need range
The antenna	The radio's voice and its ears	Transmitting with none on, a loose connector, holding it flat

The six controls, drawn generically: every radio has these, wherever the maker put them (a diagram drawn for this guide).

On/off and volume

Switch on with the antenna already fitted. Set the volume against noise, not silence: open the squelch until you hear hiss, set the volume on that hiss, then close the squelch again (NIRSC, p. 25). A radio set in silence is usually far too quiet, and you find out when a call goes unheard. For a weak signal an earphone beats the speaker (FM 24-18, p. 112) — keep one with the radio.

Squelch: the control nobody explains

A receiver with nothing to receive is at its most sensitive, so it amplifies the hiss of empty air and "you will hear noise greatly amplified" (NEETS 17, p. 72). Squelch is a gate that keeps the speaker shut until a signal worth hearing arrives. Open it (turn it down) and you get hiss and every faint signal; close it (turn it up) and the hiss goes — but "if adjusted too tightly, valid signals may not be strong enough to open the squelch" (NIRSC, p. 24).

• Set it like this: open until you hear hiss, set the volume, then close it just far enough that the hiss stops and no further — threshold squelch (NIRSC, p. 25).
• Open it on purpose when straining for a distant station: "open squelch can be used to hear a very weak signal" (p. 17). Many radios have a monitor button that opens it while held.
• Power lines and fluorescent lights can open the squelch by themselves (p. 24), and so can a generator or charger nearby (FM 24-18, p. 103).

On a cheap handheld the squelch is a number in the menu, 0 (wide open) to 9 (tightest); the middle suits most places (rule of thumb). On a CB it is a knob.

Squelch is a gate set by height: anything quieter than the line is silenced. Set it just above the hiss and no higher (a diagram drawn for this guide).

Channel or frequency

Two radios hear each other only if they are "powered on and operating on the same channel" (NIRSC, p. 37). A channel is a number somebody already attached to a frequency — CB channel 19, FRS channel 3, memory channel 7 on your handheld — and is easy to say on the air and write on a card. A frequency is the number itself: FRS channel 3 is 462.6125 MHz (§95.577).

Many radios have two modes: frequency mode, where you type numbers, and channel (memory) mode, where you turn through what you saved. In memory mode you usually cannot type a frequency at all — the commonest "my radio is broken" moment (rule of thumb). Matching also means tone (section 3) and bandwidth (section 2).

The transmit button (the PTT)

PTT means push-to-talk: hold it to talk, let go to listen. One person talks at a time, and you hear nothing while you hold it. The fire crews' drill works on any radio (NIRSC, p. 40):

1. Listen first, and know what you are going to say — "PTT stands for push-to-talk, not push-to-think".
2. Press, pause, then speak, or the first word is lost.
3. Microphone a few inches from your mouth, radio upright, speaking "slowly and distinctly" in a normal voice (also FM 24-18, p. 112). Say who you want, then who you are: "Base, this is Mary."
4. Let go and wait 10 to 15 seconds before calling again. On a long message unkey every minute or two, say "break", and carry on, because many radios cut you off (p. 41).

Plain English, not ten-codes (same page). Distress calls and message forms are in the Radio guide.

Power: high or low

Low power saves the battery and still works close by; high power is for reaching out. "The range of a transmitter is proportional to the power radiated by its antenna" (FM 24-18, p. 105), but height beats watts (Radio guide). The FCC's rule for the licence-free radios is to use the least power that does the job, except that for emergency messages you may use "the highest transmitting power available" (§95.367).

⚠️ Never turn power down by mistuning the radio: "operation with a detuned power output stage can cause damage to the transmitter" (FM 24-18, p. 105).

The antenna

• ☠️ Never transmit without the antenna on (FM 24-18, p. 111). The power comes back down the line, where reflected power "can be responsible for ... even cause circuit damage" (p. 56). Make it a habit: antenna, battery, switch on.
• Hold it upright and clear of your body (NIRSC, p. 37). Inside a vehicle a handheld is nearly deaf and mute — "most of its signal will be blocked" by the metal body, so use an outside magnet-mount antenna (same page).
• Keep the connector clean and finger-tight. A corroded connector loses more than a poor antenna does (rule of thumb).
• ⚠️ Transmitter off before touching an antenna: "serious injury or death can result from contact with the radiating antenna of a medium- or high-power transmitter" (FM 24-18, p. 56).

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3. Tones: CTCSS, DCS and the "privacy code" lie

A tone is a hum too low to hear — 67 to 250 hertz — sent underneath your voice the whole time you transmit (§95.377). Its one job is to open the other radio's speaker: the tones "act like a key; you need to use the correct key to activate the radio" (NIRSC, p. 22). It has a shelf of names for the same thing — CTCSS (continuous tone coded squelch system), channel guard, code guard, PL or "private line", tone squelch, and on bubble-pack walkie-talkies "privacy code" (NIRSC, p. 15; ICS 205 instructions, p. 23). DCS does the same job with a quiet digital stutter instead of a hum.

☠️ A tone is not privacy

Anyone on your frequency with no tone set on receive hears every word. The tone silences their speaker, not your transmission. It does not scramble or hide anything — for these radios the FCC will not even certify voice scrambling (§95.381). "Privacy code" is a marketing word. For a conversation nobody else can read, see the Mesh radio guide.

What tones are good for: getting into a repeater, which mostly will not repeat you at all without the right tone (NIRSC, p. 15; §95.1777); and keeping a busy channel quiet, so your radio sleeps through other people's traffic and wakes for your group (p. 22).

Setting them means two separate settings, and that is the whole trick. The transmit tone is what you send: set it to whatever the repeater or your group uses. The receive tone is what must arrive before your speaker opens: leave it off unless you really want the quiet, because with it on you are deaf to everyone without it. That is the federal guidance for shared channels — send the tone, listen with the tone off, and keep a button that can switch receive tones off (DHS field guide, p. 20). Hearing only your own group on a shared frequency is how two groups talk over each other.

Which tone? There are 32 standard CTCSS tones (67.0, 69.3, 71.9 … 203.5 Hz and a few above) and a long list of DCS codes; both tables are printed in the DHS field guide, p. 68 and p. 69. Some radios show tones in hertz, some as two-character codes like 1Z or 3A; that table has both (p. 8). A bubble-pack radio's "privacy code 1 to 38" is only a position in that list, and brands number them differently, which is why two brands both on "code 5" sometimes cannot hear each other (rule of thumb). Write the tone on your card in hertz, never as a brand's code number.

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4. Working through a repeater

A repeater is a radio on a hilltop that hears your handheld and shouts it again from a tall antenna with real power — it "extends your line of sight" (NIRSC, p. 6). What a repeater is, and why hill country needs one, is in the Radio guide. This section is only about making your radio use one.

Three things must all be right, and nothing happens if any one is wrong:

	What it is	If it's wrong
1. Offset	How far apart the repeater's listening and talking frequencies are: you listen on its output, transmit on its input	You transmit where nobody is listening
2. Direction	Whether your transmit frequency is above (+) or below (−) the one you listen on	Same: your voice lands on an empty frequency
3. Tone	The sub-audible tone the repeater needs before it repeats anything	The repeater hears you and ignores you

The two frequencies are the whole idea: a repeater "receives on one frequency and simultaneously re-broadcasts the signal on a different frequency" (NIRSC, p. 6), so a repeater channel is written as a receive frequency and a different transmit frequency (p. 7). A plain radio-to-radio channel — simplex, direct or talk-around — uses the same frequency both ways (p. 4).

On a handheld you set this one of two ways: put in the frequency you hear, then the offset size, the + or −, and the transmit tone, if the radio has those menu items; or save the repeater's output as the channel's receive frequency and its input as its transmit frequency, which is what a computer does for you and what every repeater list prints. GMRS is easy, because its offset is always the same: a GMRS repeater's input is 5 MHz above its output (DHS field guide, p. 101; the two channel lists in §95.1763 are 462 and 467 MHz). Ham repeaters use their own offsets, which your local repeater list gives.

Offset, direction and tone: all three right, or the repeater never answers. There is no partial credit (a diagram drawn for this guide).

Talk-around turns a repeater channel into a direct one by using the repeater's output frequency both ways. It keeps two people standing together off the repeater, but switched on by mistake it means you cannot reach the repeater at all, and nothing on the screen says so (NIRSC, p. 34). If the repeater is down, go simplex: save the direct channel beside every repeater channel so you can switch without typing (Radio guide).

The valley's own numbers are already listed — the JCEC repeater with its offset and tone, the net times, and the no-licence Monday check-in channels — in the Radio guide's local section and on its printed card. Copy them straight onto the channel card in section 7 rather than writing them down twice, and check them against a current club list before you trust them.

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6. Programming with no computer

No computer, no cable, or no software for your radio: the keypad can still do all of it. The exact presses are in your manual; the shape of the job is always this.

1. Unlock the keypad deliberately, so nothing is half-changed from a pocket press (NIRSC, p. 33).
2. Get into frequency mode, arrow on the line you are working with.
3. Type the frequency you want to listen to, every digit, no decimal point.
4. Set the width (narrow or wide) and the power.
5. Set the tone you will transmit, if the channel needs one, and leave the receive tone off.
6. For a repeater, set the offset size and the + or −, or type the transmit frequency as the channel's other half (section 4).
7. Save it to a memory channel number through the menu's save item, writing that number on your card as you go.
8. Switch to memory mode and prove it. Turn to the channel, listen, and where it is legal ask someone to answer a test call: "call someone before departing… be sure you get a response" (NIRSC, p. 39). A brief radio check is a permitted use even on the licence-free services (§95.931).

Do the whole list in one sitting, in the same order as your card, and lock the keypad when you finish. If a step will not take, you are in the wrong mode, the arrow is on the other line, or the frequency is outside what the radio was built for.

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7. A printed channel card

Fill this in, print it, and tape a copy inside the radio's case. The Radio guide's frequency card already has the numbers that are the same everywhere — CB channel 9 and 19, the ham calling frequency, the weather-radio frequencies — so copy from it rather than writing them twice.

Ch	What it is	Receive (MHz)	Transmit or offset	Tone (Hz)	N/W	Notes
1	House to barn, direct	462.6125	same	none	N	FRS ch 3, no licence, up to 2 W
2	Ham calling, direct	146.520	same	none	W	Listen here first; licence to talk
3	Local repeater		+ offset			From the local repeater list
4	Weather		receive only	—		Never transmit
5
6
7
8

The two worked rows are real: FRS channel 3 is 462.6125 MHz (§95.577) at up to 2 watts on channels 1–7 (§95.567) and needs no licence (§95.305); 146.520 MHz is the national 2 metre calling frequency, which needs a ham licence to transmit on.

Emergency offices use the same table. Their standard form, ICS 205, has exactly these columns — channel number, function, name, receive frequency with N or W, receive tone, transmit frequency with N or W, transmit tone (ICS 205, p. 21, instructions on p. 23) — so a filled-in ICS 205 handed to you in a real emergency tells you exactly what to put in the radio.

Print this, fill it in by hand, and keep a copy with every radio (a diagram drawn for this guide).

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9. Looking after radios

• Batteries are the whole game. One in the radio, one charged on the shelf (NIRSC, p. 39), and an alkaline or AA tray for the handheld as a last resort (ARRL manual, p. 12).
• Store lithium batteries part-charged and cool — about 20 to 40 % of full, at room temperature: "storage while fully charged or in elevated temperatures should be avoided as this will put stress on the cell, reduce battery life" (Li-ion overview, pp. 7–8). A pack left flat for months may never charge again (rule of thumb).
• Charging from sun or vehicle: a small panel with a USB output keeps handhelds going indefinitely, and a 12 volt battery runs a base set — see the Off-grid power guide and Generators, cars and backfeed. ⚠️ Check the voltage and which wire is positive first: "polarity conventions are not always followed" (ARRL manual, p. 76).
• Keep it clean and dry and handle it gently — the Army's whole maintenance advice in one line (FM 24-18, p. 113). A freezer bag with the antenna through a taped hole keeps rain off a handheld all day (rule of thumb). Caps or tape on unused sockets, clean antenna threads, and never pull a cable out by the wire: a corroded connector is the commonest fault in stored gear (rule of thumb).
• What kills radios: transmitting with no antenna; water inside; heat, such as a dashboard in summer; a flat battery left flat; and the wrong cable in the wrong socket, which can cause "serious electrical damage to the equipment and, in some cases, injury to the operator" (FM 24-18, p. 111).
• Keep one spare radio in a shielded box, unplugged, antenna off, its battery beside it part-charged — the cheapest insurance against both an EMP and a dropped radio (EMP guide).
• Use it. A radio worked once a week is a radio that works.

Running it on AA cells when the pack dies

Every rechargeable pack dies eventually: a few hundred charges, or a few years sitting flat. When yours will not hold a charge and no replacement is coming, the radio itself is still fine. It wants about 7.4 volts at the two contacts the pack slid onto.

• The clean way: a battery case. Makers sell a 6 × AA case shaped like the pack — it clips on exactly where the pack went, no cutting, about $10 to $18. Keep one in the can with the radio. AA cells store for a decade; a lithium pack does not.
• ⚠️ With alkaline AAs, use five cells and the dummy. Six alkalines make 9 volts, which is enough to receive but too much for the radio to transmit. The case comes with a dummy cell: five alkalines plus the dummy gives 7.5 volts and everything works. Six rechargeable NiMH cells make 7.2 volts and need no dummy. (From the makers' own instructions for these cases.)
• AAA cells work but barely last. Six AAAs make the same voltage as six AAs and will run the radio, but they hold roughly a quarter as much, so expect an hour or two of light use rather than a day. Use them to get a message out, not to live on.
• No case? A battery eliminator. The same sellers make a dummy pack with a cigarette-lighter plug on a lead, so the radio runs off a 12 volt battery or a solar setup through the Vault's 12 volt supply. That is the one to have if the radio is going to sit in one place.
• Jerry-rigging it yourself (rule of thumb, and a last resort): a six-cell AA holder, two short wires, and a careful look at which contact on the radio is +. Get it backwards and you may kill the radio. ⚠️ Work out the polarity with a multimeter on the old pack first, mark it, and solder nothing to the radio itself — tape the wires to the contacts, or clip them to the old pack's shell with the cells taken out. Never put a 12 volt battery straight on a 7.4 volt radio.
• The cells themselves — which chemistry keeps longest, how to store them, and reviving a pack that has gone flat: the Batteries guide.

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10. The law, plainly

Nothing here is legal advice, and the rules themselves are now on the drive: 47 CFR Part 95 for CB, FRS, GMRS and MURS, and Part 97 for ham.

• Listening needs no licence of any kind. A receiver, scanner or shortwave set transmits nothing. (A few states have their own rules about carrying a scanner in a vehicle; check your state's.)
• CB, FRS and MURS need no licence: the rules authorise anyone eligible to operate these stations "without individual licenses" (§95.305). MURS is five VHF channels at up to 2 watts (§95.2763, §95.2767).
• GMRS needs a licence, but no test. "A valid individual license is required to operate a GMRS station" (§95.1705). You must be 18, it lasts ten years, and it covers your immediate family — spouse, children, parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews and in-laws (§95.1705(a), (c), (e)). A GMRS station gives its call sign at the end of a conversation and at least every 15 minutes during a long one (§95.1751); the licence-free services need no call sign at all (§95.351).
• Ham needs a licence and a test, and the test is easy. The Technician licence is one written exam, Element 2: 35 questions, 26 right to pass (§97.501; §97.503), and the question pool is public, so you can study the exact questions. Hams send their call sign at the end of each contact and at least every 10 minutes (§97.119). Get licensed while it is easy (Radio guide).
• In a real emergency the rules step aside. No provision of the ham rules "prevents the use by an amateur station of any means of radiocommunication at its disposal" for "the immediate safety of human life and immediate protection of property when normal communication systems are not available" (§97.403), and a station in distress may use "any means at its disposal to attract attention, make known its condition and location, and obtain assistance" (§97.405). On the licence-free services you may use full power for emergency messages (§95.367), a GMRS licensee may let anyone use their station "if necessary to communicate an emergency message" (§95.1705(c)(3)), and emergency traffic has priority on every CB channel (§95.931). The rules mean it narrowly, though: an emergency message concerns "the immediate safety of life or protection of property" (§95.303) — real danger, now, not convenience and not practice.
• ☠️ Never send a false distress call. It is flatly prohibited (§95.353) and it sends people into danger for nothing.
• A cheap handheld is often not certified for the service you want it for. Every radio in the personal radio services must be a certified type for that service, and "use of a transmitter that is not FCC-certified voids the user's authority to operate that station" (§95.335). Since December 2017 the FCC no longer certifies a handheld under both GMRS and FRS (§95.1761(d), (e)), and a radio certified only for ham use — or not certified at all — is not legal on FRS, GMRS, MURS or CB even though it can tune those frequencies. Check what your radio's label and manual say it is certified for, and keep those channels out of its memories if it is not.
• The ordinary rules still apply: nothing against the law, no advertising, no obscene language, no deliberate interference, no false or deceptive messages (§95.333); transmit no longer than you need (§95.357); and the channels belong to nobody — they are shared, and you must cooperate to stay out of each other's way (§95.359). Transmitting on a service you are not authorised for is itself a violation (§95.363), so find out what a frequency is by listening.

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11. If this goes wrong

Problem	Try this
No sound at all	Volume up; open the squelch or hold the monitor button until you hear hiss, set the volume on the hiss, then close the squelch just past it (NIRSC, p. 25). Check no receive tone is set, which silences everyone without it (DHS field guide, p. 20)
Hiss and nothing else	Squelch too far open, or an empty channel. Close it until the hiss stops; check you are on the agreed channel
They hear me, I can't hear them	A receive tone set on your radio; narrow against wide; squelch too tight; or they are too far for your power
I hear them, they can't hear me	The arrow is on the other display line; power set low; antenna loose, missing or held flat; battery nearly flat — radios transmit badly long before they stop receiving (rule of thumb)
Nothing happens on the repeater	One of the three: offset, direction, tone (section 4). Check talk-around is not switched on, which shows nothing on the screen (NIRSC, p. 34). Then try the direct channel
It transmits on the wrong channel	Dual watch transmits on the line the arrow is on, not the one you heard: move the arrow (p. 18)
I sound odd to one person only	Bandwidth mismatch (ICS 205 instructions, p. 23)
First word cut off, or cut off mid-sentence	Press, pause, then speak; and unkey every minute or two, say "break", carry on (NIRSC, pp. 40–41)
Short battery life	Scanning or dual watch on too many channels, high power, the backlight and the beeps. Scan no more than three channels (p. 19)
Buzz, hum or constant chatter	Power lines or fluorescent lights opening the squelch (p. 24); move away from your generator and charger (FM 24-18, p. 103)
The keypad beeps and does nothing	It is locked: press and hold the lock key (p. 33)
The computer can't see the radio	The cable: wrong port, plug not pushed fully in, a hub instead of a socket on the machine, or a counterfeit chip. Try another computer before blaming the radio (rule of thumb)
Nobody answers at all	Get higher and clear of buildings and leafy trees, hold the radio upright, try a repeater (Radio guide)

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⚠️ Old advice in the library to ignore

Book says	Do this instead
Let a radio set "warm up" before transmitting, as some can be damaged without it (FM 24-18, p. 112)	That was vacuum-tube equipment; any radio you will own switches on and works (rule of thumb). The rest of that page — antenna attached, connectors clean, controls checked — still holds
The DHS field guide's FRS page: 14 channels at half a watt (p. 101)	That 2016 edition pre-dates the rule change. FRS is now 22 channels, up to 2 watts on channels 1–7 and 15–22 (§95.577; §95.567). Its tone tables on p. 68 have not changed
Radio plans list a tone on both transmit and receive (NIRSC, p. 22)	Right on a closed system where everyone gets the same programming. On a shared channel, send the tone but listen with the receive tone off, or you will not hear the strangers sharing it (DHS field guide, p. 20)
A radio's box says its codes give a "private" channel	They give a quiet speaker. Anyone listening without a code hears you (section 3)

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Pictures & diagrams

🖼️ = drawings in the books on this drive; the other links are photos in the offline Wikipedia.

• Two real handhelds with every control named — NIRSC, p. 13; p. 20
• Setting the squelch knob, step by step — NIRSC, p. 25; the circuit inside, NEETS 17, p. 72
• A simplex channel and a repeater channel on a real radio plan — NIRSC, p. 5; p. 7
• A repeater's two frequencies, and what talk-around does to them — NIRSC, p. 6; p. 34
• The 32 CTCSS tones and the DCS codes — DHS field guide, p. 68; p. 69
• The blank ICS 205 radio plan, and how each column is filled in — ICS Forms Booklet, p. 21; p. 23
• Why a mismatched antenna matters, and the meter that shows it — FM 24-18, p. 56
• A long wire for shortwave listening — FM 24-18, p. 98; good and poor places to put a radio, p. 108
• Photos: Walkie-talkie, Push-to-talk, Squelch, Continuous Tone-Coded Squelch System, Repeater, Whip antenna, Standing wave ratio

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Related guides

• Emergency radio guide — which radio to use, licences, antennas, range, nets and how to call for help
• Mesh radio guide — Meshtastic: text messages radio to radio, and the only private option here
• Signals and Morse guide — the neighborhood OK/HELP plan, message forms, and signalling with no radio
• Off-grid power guide — keeping radios and batteries charged from the sun or a vehicle
• EMP guide — a shielded box for the spare radio, and what to do after an event
• Navigation and weather guide — reading the sky when the weather radio is silent
• ARK Vault guide — the Vault's own radios and how they are powered
• Batteries: Keeping Them, Charging Them, Reviving Them — battery care, charging with no charger, and testing a cell