Would Fox Creek , Valleyview and Grande Cache work in the GP Region if keyed in the region?
The answer is a definite
maybe, and it depends on a couple of things.
1. Most trunk systems, including AFRRCS, will only broadcast communications on a tower if there is a person on that tower listening to them. This doesn't mean a scanner user, it means an actual subscriber radio, and it has to be actually tuned to that channel (just being in the scan list doesn't count). The reason for this is to make the system more efficient - if you only send a talkgroup to the tower sites where you know someone is who wants to hear it, you're not using up channel space needlessly on the other 390+ towers in the network. So if you had a talkgroup called Fox Creek, and the only users who are tuned to that talkgroup are affiliated to the Fox Creek tower and the Valleyview tower, only those two towers are going to hear the talkgroup - no other sites are going to hear it.
2. The talkgroup has to be authorized to use that tower. For similar reasons to point #1, the administrators only allow talkgroups to be used in certain areas. For example, I'm with Redwood Meadows Emergency Services. My response area is in a region that spans the City of Calgary, Rocky View County, Kananaskis, Tsuut'ina, and potentially I could be called to aid in Bighorn MD, Foothills County, and a few other regions close by. So my agency's talkgroups are configured to work in those areas. If I drive to Red Deer with my radio, it won't work on my RMES talkgroups there, because I have no business using my talkgroups in that area. If I was truly working in that area, for example if I was helping on a major disaster, I'd be switched over to a common event talkgroup that covers that area. The purpose behind restricting talkgroups to the area they service is to prevent them from taking up resources in other areas. Another example - let's say I am in Fox Creek for whatever reason, and had my RMES radio with me. I want to keep track of what's going on back home, so I switch my radio to RMES dispatch. However, every time someone uses that talkgroup, that takes away one channel (frequency) on the Fox Creek tower, leaving one less channel for the local users to use for doing their work in Fox Creek and area. Eventually someone might get "busied out" (no channels available) because I'm taking up space listening to things that are happening 500+ kilometers away.