Scanning, Site Affiliation & Other Stuff
..... Don't preps by default lock on to the strongest programed tower signal when affiliating to a trunk system?
Sort of.
Radios will affiliate with the site that has the strongest signal and the highest level of service. So if the best signal is from a site that is in site trunking, (& therefore isolated from the rest of the system) the radio will find the next best signal from an adjacent site.
The thing to remember in comparing system radios to scanners is that the system "sees" its radios, but doesn't "see" a scanner. So if your system radio is on talkgroup 1234, & in scan mode & affiliated with site A, it won't pick up traffic on TG 5678 if there are no radios affiliated with site A on TG 5678; they might all be affiliated with site B & chattering away. Yet your scanner, since it can monitor several sites at a time, can hear sites A and B, and will pick up the traffic on TG 5678.
So; if the dispatcher's radio is on site A, and the unit they are talking to is also on site A, they might hear each other fine; but if you are on site B, the signal might get distorted or "go digital". We experience this all the time since we're a countywide dispatch center; mobile units who are all affiliated with one site will hear each other fine, & since we affiliate with a different site, sometimes traffic is garbled.