What is Selcall?????

for the most part very few users use selcall.

what it does enable you to do is 'call' a specific person (must be in range and on the same channel) essentially you get your mates selcall number and program it into your set.

you then send a selcall tone out and if they are within range their radio will beep (continuously) and yours will play a tone to indicate that they have recieved the call.

you can have all of your mates setup with similar numbers

eg 12345, 12346, 12347

and you can call all of them by sending a call to 1234A

in this case all of their units beep, but yours does not (I think)

If you use quiet mode, your radio will not 'open' for any signal that is not preceeded by a selcall tone, this way you will only hear people in your group, or just that particular person.

I have it, and it has been handy in a very limited number of scenarios, we are upgrading some work units to use selcall at the moment for a very specific usage requirement (in this case a very noisy location).

Dave,
so does it follow that if we are in convoy and don't want to listen to the language near cities, all we do is put the radio on "quiet" and use selcall?

That would work provided others in your group had a radio with the same capability.

It used mainly on repeaters around town. You can sit on a repeater without having to listen to the garbage. Then if it goes quiet and you actually have a chance to use the repeater for what its designed for, you can drop a selcall to try and catch up with a mate who also has selcall.

Click here for the manual on the 4400 from Prestige Comms, who are about the best price going, also $8 freight overnight to your door.

This will answer your questions.

Also www.google.com.au will get a few hits to sellcall.

YMMV