Question on Iowa Trunking

[daren77]

I have a very limited understanding of trunking. Am I correct in that if you are within receiving range of one of the towers in your particular trunked system that you can hear all activity on that system....not just the activity in the town the tower is located in?

For Example.

I live near Spencer, IA which has several (5) frequencies listed for the RAYCOM trunking system that has many users all across the state of Iowa and then some on it. So if I put in the proper talk groups for Cedar Falls Police (on the same system) will I be able to monitor their communications even though they are 5 hours away from my location?

I know this is probably a basic question but thanks to anyone who takes the time to help out a newbie.

 

[fireside]

Daren, short answer no. The RACOM system is state wide, so if a Cedar Falls Police radio was to be in the Spencer area,it would be able to talk using the Spencer tower.

 

[bar422]

I live in the Waterloo/Cedar Falls area and when I put a couple of local RACOM sites in my scanner I occasionally hear traffic from Dubuque,Marshalltown,Davenport and Des Moines. I think the previous post was right,you can only hear radio traffic from those areas if one of their radios happens to be in the same area as the tower site your listening to.

 

[daren77]

I thought that was probably the case... thank you for the info.

 

[itsme312006]

According to what I understand, some users of the racom system are designated as local, some as regional and some as statewide. If a user is local, you will only hear them off their local towers... A user with regional or statewide use, such as EMS, could be heard off of other towers and such.

I live in the Iowa City/Coralville area, and quite frequently will pick up EMS off the Iowa City tower advising their dispatch of arrival and departure from the UI hospital.

Not sure that this is completely accurate, but that's how it's been explained to me. :-D

 

[splash1]

I have some racom frequencies for Coralville PD and will pickup Blackhawk co, Scott co, Fayette co, one of the Iowa prisons( I think Ft Dodge ) and sometime Soiux city. From just North of Coralville.
Thats one of the things i like about racom.
Rick

 

[nubi78]

Now, my $0.02 on the original post. I would say if Racom wanted to "turn" on Waterloo's PD on the tower you listen to, they could. I don't think they do because that would be a lot of radio traffic spread out over a wide area and would serve no general purpose to the folks who have to pay the bills (but it would be awesome for us)...

In other words, imagine the volume of traffic on your local tower if you picked up every transmission on the Racom network. Every frequency would be bogged down with traffic constantly.

Take care,

Joe , Cedar Rapids, IA