identifying unknown talkgroups?

[blutarsky]

the RR database has proven to be quite accurate for my local county trunk system, but recently i'm hearing traffic on some new talkgroups which haven't been heard before and also are not listed in the database or other resources i've searched on.

my question is about accurately identifying these new groups -- how do i find out exactly who it is using these new talkgroups and what the purpose is? i've started jotting down notes about which talkgroup id i hear and what kind of chatter is going on (ambulance calls, building names, etc) but i'm not really certain where to go from here. is it all a guessing game or is there some sort of way to confirm any guesswork involved in identifying what it is and who it belongs to?

thanks.

 

[scannerfreak]

Most of the time you have to rely on the users to tell you. For example "unit 1 to unit 2, go to ops 1" Then you know that talkgroup is "ops1". If you know a talkgroup is used by police,fire, ect..go ahead and submit it to the DB.

Even though you don't know the actual name of the talkgroup, you know the user which is considered identified from the database point of view. Then eventually you will hear a user say the name of the talkgroup and you can submit the update to the DB.

The only other way is to have inside info from a user of the system, which happens more than one would think it would :wink:

Hope this helps..

 

[brandon]

Trunker and an extra scanner is my favorite method of logging unknown talkgroups. Set unknown talkgroups with the highest priority and use some VOX recording software like ScanRec to record what comms take place during a period of time. When you come home check your recorded file to see what you found. ScanRec is also nice because it logs timestamps and you can refer to the trunker logs to match them up with talkgroups it finds.
Another great tool for Trunker is TrunkerDM. It makes it easy to see what radios have affiliated on any specific talkgroups.

I have also used a program called IDTracker (http://bellsouthpwp.net/k/d/kd5eis/IDTracker/IDTracker.htm) which is designed for monitoring and recording unknown talkgroups.