Wildcard is great. It means it will receive any active talkgroup on the system, as opposed to only those talkgroups programmed in your scanlists. It's useful for finding new talkgroups. It's also useful for testing reception and decode of a particular system (if it is not too busy), since you will receive more traffic in a certain time period. If a system is very busy, the wildcard can be annoying. On a busy system, the radio will cycle non-stop through the last few seconds of calls, so you end up hearing nothing intelligible and going crazy. Unfortunately, there is no setting to have the radio join a call only when receiving a channel grant command (vs. a call continuation command). To use wildcard to determine new talkgroups, put the wildcard and all of the known talkgroups in a scanlist. Then lockout all of the known talkgroups. This will cause the radio to receive unknown talkgroups only. I think the TG number assigned to the wildcard is internal to the scanner only.
On the advanced tab of EZ Scan, you'll want to change the display options to show Radio ID, site, etc. There is an option to show the CC/VC (control channel/ voice channel). That might show you what you want. I have not used the DMR yet, so I can't specifically answer that. Other than dumping the control channel data to the log file, I am not sure if the radio will show the LCN or frequency identifier.
When you use the limit search, service search, and spectrum sweeper, that is referred to as "searching" vs. "scanning." When you search, you are looking for activity on frequencies you haven't yet identified. Scanning implies cycling through preselected frequencies (or talkgroups if a trunked system) that you have already identified.
Are you trying to "scan" or "search"?
