FarmingtonFire said:
Forgive me for being so naieve on the subject, but could somebody explain to me what trunking is and how it works? I have a dual trunking scanner, but have never used the feature, and to be honest with you, I first thought a trunking scanner was one you mounted in the trunk of your car. I have read a little on it, but still dont understand. Thank you.
Riley Stanchina
Hi Riley,
You should check out the following links:
http://wiki.radioreference.com/index.php/Trunking
http://wiki.radioreference.com/index.php/Trunking_Basics
very briefly, trunking is a method of reusing frequencies since not all are typically active at the same time. For instance, if your county has a trunked system they may have 4 frequencies - Depending on the type of trunking system, one of those frequencies may be a control channel and will not be used for voice. On other trunking systems it is possible that there is no 'control channel'. At any rate, the idea behind trunking is that the trunking system knows at any given time what frequencies are in use, which are free for use, and who is wanting to use the system. Thus it is more efficient. A trunking system allows more people to use a given number of frequencies - it's better management of frequency usage.
Imagine if you worked for a company that had 3 separate frequencies that they talk on - conventional frequencies, not trunked. All of your employees use 'F-1' for their primary talk. If that frequency is in use they haev to switch to another frequency to attempt to call somebody.
In a trunked system, the system would keep track of that - and when you keyed up your radio to attempt to access the system, the system would grant you access to whichever channel was free without you having to tune to it. And in a trunking system there are 'talk groups' where common parties in an agency (such as your health department) are assigned their own talk group so that they only hear traffic from each other and do not necessarily have to hear the traffic of other talk groups. There could also be multiple agencies who share a common goal (local pds in your county for instance) who may have access to certain talk groups and no others. This allows them to talk to other PDs who are on the system but nto have to hear the health department in another talk group.
In a trunked system, if you are assigned to a certain talk group or select that talk group to transmit on, anybody whose radio is capable of receiving that talk group will hear your call. Then they can respond to you. And again it all works through the trunked system so that the frequencies are used efficiently and users of the system have more consistent and reliable access to the system without having to constantly switch channels, since hte system does that transparently.
Mike
