A member of our ham radio club showed me a small
hand-held transceiver he had gotten surplus which appears to be
designed for the multi-use business frequencies in the 150-MHZ
range.  It had a single knob on top near the antenna for power
and volume control, the usual push-to-talk button on the side
where one would expect to find it and another button under that
called Monitor.

        He then told me to turn the radio off and then turn it
back on while holding down the Push-to-talk.  I did and a female
voice said "1" from the speaker.  If you pushed the Push-to-talk
yet again, it said "2," and so on up to "4" and then it cycled
back to 1.

        This was the channel selector.

        If you pressed the Monitor button while in this mode, the
voice said "Tone off."

        Pushing the Push-to-talk in that mode caused the voice to
count from 1 through 38 which is the number of tones that the rig
can send and receive.

        If one set the channel and tone, then you needed to turn
it back off and then on without holding any buttons down to be up
and running.

        This is living proof that accessible equipment made for
the general public is possible and useful.

        Just think, no space-wasting display that has to be read
by using a power-wasting back-light in the dark.

        Since the primary function of this device is to send and
receive voice, it makes all the sense in the world to use audio
as the display.

        By the way, I don't know or possibly don't remember who
makes this radio.  I was simply impressed with how practical the
control features are compared with most of the stuff out there
these days.  If it had been a ham transceiver, it would have
needed a few more functions to set repeater offsets, etc, but I
certainly liked the basic concept.


Martin McCormick WB5AGZ  Stillwater, OK
OSU Center for Computing and Information Services Network Operations Group