For those of you monitoring the Horry County
P25 system…I submitted a FOIA request in April for a list of all TGIDs assigned within the system. The request was denied and the county response directed me to the RRDB to satisfy the request. I submitted an appeal, which was again denied with the same explanation. The appeal also challenged the county to explain why and how RR became the county's official documentation outlet and to produce any relevant paperwork formalizing said arrangement. Again a denial.
I have admiration for anyone willing to take the time and go to the expense of filing an FOIA request for radio information. It's unfortunate, but understandable, that these requests for operational information are denied. I tend to agree that it doesn't hurt to ask. Filing a lawsuit is probably taking it too far.
So…the TGID listing for this system is completely crowd-sourced as are many others in RRDB. Currently, the listing includes much of the usual items one would expect for most of the county and municipal users, but there are many more in use that aren't listed due to a lack of required usage data. Some TGs are surveillance usage, some are just keyups, some may be encrypted, etc… For each, better info is needed to allow the DBA to post and stay within RR posting guidelines. I should add the DBA has been extremely flexible and cooperative in updating the system.
I think that identifying the commonly used talkgroups on a system is as good as we can hope for from submissions for scanner listeners. I understand the desire to ID every possible talkgroup, but if the casual listener isn't likely to hear more than 50% of the talkgroups ever, the value of that information is diminished. On the old Horry County system, we had many talkgroups listed that were rarely if ever used, yet they took up space in my radios.
Want to help? I've been gathering data using discovery mode on several Unidens and booked that data to a spreadsheet along with the published list data. I've also saved that as a PDF for viewing/printing. The PDF should display in your browser using the link below. The spreadsheet will download to your download folder when clicked...you can then open with anything handling xlsx files.
Any confirmed info you can add/correct can be posted to this thread…or better…submit to the DBA for system updating. Remember…we can all benefit!
Remember that the RadioReference Collaboration Wiki is another good platform for sharing and maintaining data that doesn't make it into the database. It's not too difficult to learn how to make a bulletted list or table to store data about unidentified talkgroups. That might be a better option than sharing spreadsheet files, and there's a link to the Wiki page at the top of the database page.
Consider running Pro96Com or Unitrunker to monitor system activity. That can help narrow down talkgroups with legitimate activity, and those with just affiliations or those that are encrypted. The big benefit with these applications is that they let you track radio IDs and their activity on talkgroups, affiliations, etc. This can help narrow down the use of unknown talkgroups enough to get the in the DB. For example, if you can identify and label radios that you know are used by MBPD, and you see many of them affiliating with an unknown or encrypted talkgroup, it's a safe bet that this is an MBPD talkgroup.
Thanks to everyone that's submitted information so far. It's nice to here that visitors from outside our area have used our information and are pleased with the results.
