"All-call" from the radio?

[hfxChris]

Hey folks, I have a question.

There is an agency here that uses the province's trunked radio system (a Mot type IIi Smartzone w/ Omnilink). They have a pile of talkgroups (15-20 or so), and I've been told that on some of their radios they have an "all call" talkgroup which they said will broadcast over all of their talkgroups.

I know this can be done via the console with a multiselect, but I've never heard of it being done from the radio before. Is that possible?
If so, would it have its' own TGID, or is it something different?

Thanks!

 

[Jay911]

I have seen people program the "all-call" talkgroup or "announcement group" into a radio before, but never seen anyone try to actually use it from a radio. Not sure what that would do.

There can be talkgroups defined in both the system and each radio which will open whenever any traffic is on them - kind of like a priority channel, but generally not part of the defined talkgroups accessible by the channel selector. For example, the local police service uses their announcement TG to broadcast "calling all cars" type incidents to every radio in the fleet.

Far as I know, it's just another talkgroup, and since a console is just considered a radio by the system, then any radio should be able to transmit on the ATG. A Motorola tech would be able to answer you definitively though.

 

[davidgcet]

the announcement talkgroup works great when properly programmed. the radio knwos it is an annoucement talkgroup, it transmits only on that TGID, and the site controller knows that that is an announcement talkgroup which is affiliated with TG X,Y,Z, etc.. the CC simple sends out the data burst containing the ATG info and all radios that are programmed for that particular ATG will "open up" and RX the audio.

the cool thing is if you have the ATG in your radio as an ATG, you can hear everything on all affiliated TG. i have programmed and used ATG on everythign from older MTS/MCS up thru APX radios and it works great.

EDIT:

Jay is correct, all radios(in most cases) are supposed to have that ATG in them, it goes under the personality but only certain units have it out in the zone/chan list so that you limit the number of people that can transmit on it.

 

[hfxChris]

Ok, this all makes sense. So the ATG is an actual TG with an actual ID, cool stuff!
Thanks guys