In some areas there is a lot on unlicensed traffic. In areas like this the standard USB radio will get overridden its why i use a 5 watt radio on my nodes. With the ID TIME and announcements turned on this way these people will know there are licensed users on the channel. And go somewhere else.
But that still may not help because bubble packed radios come with preset tones so they may not even be able to hear you. They will only get interference when your node is on and they talk. You can scan for there tones and then talk to them if you wish but there is a solution.
Bubble packed radios are forbidden from using and do not have the 8 repeater input channels 23-30. If you have a channels with no repeater on it you can use that interference free. You may have seen other incomplete frequency charts online. Here is mine the channels are ordered by frequency showing band 1 462 on the left and band 2 467 on the right 1 making it more clear what channels are next to your node.
Example if you have walmart on ch 3 then ch 17 and ch 18 are on each side of that.
Channels 23-30 are repeater inputs that bubble packed radios do not have. They are licensed for mobiles not bases and your node is mobile so you can use them. They are not licensed only for repeater use.
In most charts they don’t list these channels or they don’t give them channel numbers and proper frequency locations on a chart.
Changing tones.
You can change your tones. You can also use digital codes. USB radios don’t have the digital codes but nodes built with actual radios do. the BF888 has both digital and analog and is programmed by chirp.
I had a lost of codes not to use but Im still searching for it..