Help with sorting out talk groups, I think

[shrubby]

I've been a fan of radioreference.com and especially the live feeds for a while now and when the feed for the city police department was removed I missed it. So much in fact, I posted a couple times enquiring about it's status and was told the feeder was moving and no longer able to provide it.

A little while later I decided I was going to get my own scanner and listen on my own equipment. I ended up with a used RS Pro 163 which works great for what I wanted it for. But one thing I am having difficulty with is apparently all of the local public safety agencies all got together on one TRS. Well it was easy to program the control frequencies and listen, but I haven't figured out how to segment the different agencies. For example, I not only get the police, but fire dispatch, county sheriff, another, neighboring city's police dispatch and even a local college's security and maintenance dispatch.

What I would like to do is segment or isolate each of these groups so that I will only hear that agency. I've researched a little bit and it appears this can be done with talk groups? I've tried using that manual and thought I had it figured out but was unsuccessful.

I also read the easier to read manual liked to from the site but still not luck. I'll figure out if its possible (which I think it is someone as demonstrated by a feeder who only broadcasts the fire dispatch.

Is this possible to do? with the equipment I have? If I can get answers to those two I will continue to try figuring it out. If you have any pointers on how to do it, if it's possible that would be great to.

In any case, I appreciate all the help I've gotten here and enjoy the scanner, something I never imagined doing.

This is for City of Tacoma in WA state:
Pierce County, Washington (WA) Scanner Frequencies and Radio Frequency Reference

Thanks!
Shrubby

 

[ScanWI]

This Wiki page should help you out, You will want to select the talkgroup numbers you want from the database and enter them in. By doing this you will only here the traffic from that specific talkgroup.

Programming Shortcut Pro-163 Pro-164 - The RadioReference Wiki

One thing to note, under the mode column you might see a D(digital) or E(Encrypted) if those are there you will be unable to monitor them on your model of scanner.

 

[shrubby]

Thanks for taking the time to reply. I think I've done that. Because the instructions are not quite accurate (maybe they were or maybe another version of the scanner) I'm not 100 % sure, What I managed to do is define the TGs that I wanted to listen to, make sure that sub bank is on, make sure the others are not.,

And to confirm, I went through all of the other banks and TG slots to make sure nothing was defined in them even though they are off anyway. When I look at Bank 1 - sub Bank 1, I have 7 TGs defined. With that sub Bank turned on, I am still getting all of the noise from the other channels.

The instructions say

1.Press PROG, then press TRUNK to enter the ID program mode.(This gets me to where I can scroll through the sub banks and their channels (TGs?)
2.Press FUNC, then use UP or DOWN ARROW to select a bank.(I'm already here from step 1)
3.Repeatedly press MODE to select a trunking mode (Motorola, EDACS, or LTR). (this works)
4.Repeatedly press TRUNK to select the sub-bank. (already selected from step 1)
5.Press UP or DOWN ARROW to select the location where to store the Talk Group ID. (Again already here)
6.Use the number keys to enter the Talk Group ID: (This works)
7.Press ENT. (This works)

After that I end up with something that looks like this:

ID Bank 1-1 ON
Motorola TGID#00
MOT: 52304 lo
ID# 52304

and I can use the arrow keys to see my other TGs which look identical accept for TGID, MOT, and ID. These all reflect the TGIDs I entered above.

At this point I don't hear anything and it stays on 52304 - seems like it is still in PROG mode. So I hit scan and that's when everything is picked up...

Again please forgive me if these are answered elsewhere or if I have misread or misinterpreted the instructions

Thanks!
Chris

 

[ScanWI]

I am wondering if your scanner is scanning in "open" mode. this will allow all heard traffic through. This is the way to change it.

There are two trunking modes, OPEN and CLOSED:

- OPEN lets you hear ALL active TGs
- CLOSED lets you hear ONLY the TGs you have put into the SUB-BANKS.
“–” appears for CLOSED mode and “+” appears for OPEN mode under the channel number.
- To set OPEN or CLOSED mode for the bank that is ON, Press FUNC then ./DELAY.

 

[shrubby]

Seems likely. It appeared to be set to closed but I'm not 100 % sure. I saw the -- so I assumed it was closed. I might just re-initialize the radio as I made plenty of mistakes getting to this point and I wonder if a setting I saved by mistake is causing my issue. And I'm fairly sure I understand enough to get it programed correctly, at least to get as far as I am now.

Thanks again!
Shrubby

 

[shrubby]

It looks like I miss-posted this by placing it in this forum. I'd like to move it but I don't see how. Is a forum moderator required to do this? Sorry for the post...

 

[ScanWI]

Well let us know if redoing it helps and then we can go from there, I no longer have that scanner so I can't look at it.

 

[W8RMH]

It looks like I miss-posted this by placing it in this forum. I'd like to move it but I don't see how. Is a forum moderator required to do this? Sorry for the post...

Click on the white and red triangle with the black exclamation point in the upper right hand corner of each post to contact a moderator.

 

[shrubby]

Thank you W8RMH!

I will finish this post here since it was not moved and then be sure to post scanner specific questions to the appropriate forum.

I was able to get this working, although I'm not exactly sure why it started working. I've learned a bunch more and am now fairly comfortable working with it. Not very intuitive

I am now wondering about upgrading to a digital scanner but I'm not sure how much good that would do me as most of the channels I was interested in are available with the 163.

I may post again asking for advice on this.

Thanks again for all the help kc0wkp!!! It was much appreciated.

Shrubby

 

[ScanWI]

I'm glad to hear you have gotten it working, I'm sure by the time you need to upgrade to digital there will new models out with more features and possibly modes.