When listening to our local repeater, which is now a combined P25/analog machine, every once in a while my squelch opens to a blast of digital noise. I've noticed this problem with at least two different Baofeng radios (a UV-3R+ and a UV-82). I have a receive tone set (146.2) so during a digital QSO I should hear nothing, just see a receive light, which is mostly what happens. But when it breaks through it's not just a momentary annoyance, the squelch stays open for the duration of that transmission - and a QSO which breaks squelch once often does it more than once - so the radio just ends up turned off.
Essentially, we can no longer monitor our local repeater.
Are others having the same problem, and if so, is it with P25 specifically or do other digital modes sometimes break tone squelch on analog radios? Is it related to the tone in use, perhaps a harmonic of the audio frequencies P25 modulates, and if so what tones are safe to use with P25? Is it sloppy tone filtering on the part of our ultra-cheapie analog radios or does it affect "quality" analog radios as well? Is it an odd interaction with the Baofeng squelch tail elimination or some other "feature" of the radio that's on by default, or even just a firmware bug affecting just a few radios? Or is it on the transmit side with somebody's P25 radio transmitting out of spec or somehow configured to send an analog tone on a digital transmission (is that even possible?) and the repeater is passing it through?
Or, am I the only one experiencing this (as indicated by the dearth of results in my googling) and I just need to replace these old non-firmware-upgradeable clunkers?
Thanks, and 73