zlacker

>>eloran+(OP)
I'm surprised they didn't mention that someone in Chicago seems to have stolen a police radio and has been trolling them for days.

>>empath+Ka
I'm pretty sure any $30 Baofeng will let you broadcast on these frequencies.

>>swebs+9h
Any trunked radio system hops between frequencies enough that this wouldn't work.

Individual radios get "paged" on a control channel and told where to receive. Eg, "Radios tuned to the police talk group, go to frequency X now." The speaker, when transmitting, gets assigned a frequency on the fly.

A baofeng could stomp on a transmission, but nobody would follow it otherwise.

>>oasisb+ok
True, but not everybody is on trunked systems with channel-hopping. Especially in rural areas, you'll find plenty of systems that are just straight up analog on some VHF or UHF frequency. Generally, if you know the repeater offset and PL tone, you could - in principle - transmit on their system. Now doing so is a pretty Bad Idea for many reasons, but it's definitely technically possible in those places.