Couple of Trunk88 Questions

[ayaresr]

Fired up an old laptop today that I used in the past for Trunk88. I'm monitoring a P25 Motorola SmartZone system with it. In watching it decode for a while now, I have a couple things I'd like clarification on.

1) "Rejection: Radio xxxxx: Site access denied" At what point does this occur, when a specific unit tries to affiliate, key up, or either? Also, does that mean the unit is not a valid radio on the system, or is there a means in a SmartZone system to program what units are allowed to affiliate to given sites?

2) This one really threw me for a loop... "Radio xxxxx deaffiliated [was on wrong system]" What exactly does that mean? It would seem to me the system wouldn't have allowed the radio to affiliate in the first place if it didn't belong on the system.

3) Had a Talkgroup Name "BSI" show up with no TGID or RID. Would I be correct to assume this is Base Station ID?

4) What is the purpose of the section directly underneath the frequency display where it shows "group comm; Radio xxxxx on <tgid>" Isn't this same info displayed in the bottom portion of the screen? Or does this section serve another purpose that I'm missing?

5) Last one (for now anyway) Is there any way to access a log of all tgid's and rid's? If so, where can I find and possibly print this data from?

Thanks and sorry for being so long winded. This is my first time really getting into the program.
Ryan

 

[slicerwizard]

1) "Rejection: Radio xxxxx: Site access denied" At what point does this occur, when a specific unit tries to affiliate, key up, or either?

On affiliation. After receiving that rejection, a radio will not PTT.

Also, does that mean the unit is not a valid radio on the system, or is there a means in a SmartZone system to program what units are allowed to affiliate to given sites?

The latter. The RID is valid on the system, but is not allowed on the zone that you're monitoring.

2) This one really threw me for a loop... "Radio xxxxx deaffiliated [was on wrong system]" What exactly does that mean?

It means that while hunting for a site to use, the radio came across the control channel that you were monitoring, so it affiliated. The RID was valid on the system, so the controller didn't reject it as an invalid ID. After sitting on the control channel for a bit, the radio decoded the SysID message that is periodically broadcast. Apparently, it wasn't the SysID the radio was expecting, so the radio said "Oops, sorry about that - I'll be leaving now..."

This happens quite frequently in the area between Oshawa/Cobourg and Parry Sound as radios bounce between the Fleetnet Zone 1 and Fleetnet Zone 2 systems: http://home.ica.net/~phoenix/wap/Fleetnet/Fleetnet Zone 2.jpg

A system will respond to this deaffiliation by issuing an affiliation request across all of its zones (sites) to determine where the real system radio is and what talkgroup it's monitoring.

It would seem to me the system wouldn't have allowed the radio to affiliate in the first place if it didn't belong on the system.

RIDs are not unique. Many systems share the same valid RIDs (and control channel frequencies). Until a radio sees a SysID broadcast, an ambiguity exists.

3) Had a Talkgroup Name "BSI" show up with no TGID or RID. Would I be correct to assume this is Base Station ID?

Yes, it is the zone broadcasting its Morse code callsign.

4) What is the purpose of the section directly underneath the frequency display where it shows "group comm; Radio xxxxx on <tgid>" Isn't this same info displayed in the bottom portion of the screen? Or does this section serve another purpose that I'm missing?

It's the Foreground Activity display area. It displays a log of voice comms. If you're using TRUNK88 to drive a second radio, it's a log of followed comms. Otherwise it shows all comms.

You can control the size of this display by editing the FGA Allocation parameter.

5) Last one (for now anyway) Is there any way to access a log of all tgid's and rid's? If so, where can I find and possibly print this data from?

TRUNK88 stores data for all zones, channels, talkgroups, patches and radio IDs in control files. They're named <sysid>.CTL and can be viewed/edited with any text editor (like Windows Notepad)