New to trunking - PLEASE HELP!!

[nopicowboy]

Hi everyone. I'm new to the forum, but am no stranger to scanning or radio. I am a ham, KG4LJF, and I LOVE to scan.... anything.. from McDonalds, to just anything in the air.

Lately, I have been intrigued by trunking systems. I have a somewhat vague understanding of how they work.. Pretty much each time a mic is keyed, the radio in a police car, or ambulance, etc, is transmitting on a different frequency correct? So during one transmission, an officer might be conducting a traffic stop on.. 863.5000... and the next time he keys the mic to talk to dispatch, he might be on 865.9000? Then EMS may be paged, and then they will appear on 863.5000?

Thats about all I know about trunking, other that the system names. I do not live in the city myself, but I frequent Louisville to visit my uncle, and Lexington to the Bluegrass Stockyards quite a bit. My question is, can some of you guys and gals' help me with my scanning ventures? I'd like to bring my 2051 along n the trips with me so I could get a taste of a trunking system.. I'm used to listening to police and ems repeaters here in town that only use one frequency for the output where you hear both sides of the conversation, but Trunking seems just overwhelming to me with all the frequencies and talkgroup ID's and everything you have to enter.

So please, you folks from the city, help me out so I can tune in when I visit. Many thanks in advance..

 

[rdale]

Visit the "wiki" link at the top of the page for plenty of info on trunking...

 

[seamusg]

Try using the Wiki it has a lot of information.
http://www.radioreference.com/wiki/index.php/Trunking_Basics

 

[unitcharlie]

nopicowboy:
Welcome to rr.com!
If you just want to know enough about setting up Louisville and/or Lexington in your scanner that is relatively simple..... do you travel northbound on 127 and then east on the BG to Lexington or west on I-64 to Louisville? There are a bunch of active freqs along those routes.... I have Lexington pretty well mapped out but I haven't kept up with what is going on in Louisville with MetroSafe but will help as I can...

 

[ofd8001]

Trunking/Louisville

There's not much worth listening to right now from a trunking standpoint in Louisville. The database section of RR has pretty much everything that would be interesting. Public works and the airport are the only users on the current 800 system.

There's a new trunking system on the horizon for Louisville. It will be digital. It will come around mid 2007. I don't know if the scanner you have will work with digital, however as I am not familar with this model.