No Affiliate Scan

[KevinC]

I may be a little naive, but what (other than hobbyist) is a legitimate case use for no affiliate scan? And please don't say it's so you can monitor adjacent agencies because you should already have them in your radio.

Someone please educate me.

 

[nikronzo]

MA/Com and then Harris and continuing to L3 have deemed it an integral part of their subscribers to allow a never register function. I've never seen it personally but dont the bendix radios also allow it? As for MSI subs, obviously, their prerogative is "if you need to listen, get an ID"...

 

[KevinC]

MA/Com and then Harris and continuing to L3 have deemed it an integral part of their subscribers to allow a never register function. I've never seen it personally but dont the bendix radios also allow it? As for MSI subs, obviously, their prerogative is "if you need to listen, get an ID"...

Thanks, but that doesn’t answer my question. 😁

 

[GTR8000]

So you can monitor adjacent agencies.

No but seriously, since we live in the real world and not a perfect world, there are times where the people running the adjacent county or town's TRS might be an absolute PIA to deal with, and so agencies wind up finding workarounds if they want to monitor them. There is one county around these parts in particular who are absolute d-bags when it comes to getting an ID on their system for outside agencies, and basically make you sign your first born over to them before they'll even consider the request. It's a real problem when it comes to the so-called INTEROPERABILITY that P25 systems were supposed to be encouraging (lol).

Is it the right way to do things? Nope, not at all. Is it sketchy af and legally troublesome to generate a system key (for an MSI subscriber, at least)? Yup. Does it happen anyway, even at unofficially official levels (i.e. by system admins/radio techs)? Sure as hell does.

And before the usual small crowd of Super Sysadmins chime in with the same stuff they've posted on these forums hundreds of times...get over it/yourselves. You know it happens even if it makes your blood boil as you sit in front of GenWatch all day and night salivating at the thought of catching some poor schmuck accidentally affiliating with your precious system. Not everyone is as perfect as you are, believe it or not, nor do we live in an ideal world.

 

[GTR8000]

Part 2

If the system key issue weren't an issue, then it really wouldn't be that big a deal. Akin to programming a conventional frequency RX only for "situational awareness" even if you don't have an MOU with the other agency/county. As long as the programming is done correctly and no laws are being broken by passively monitoring a system, it's not that big a deal. Again, this is in a scenario where you're not having to generate a system key that you're not supposed to have.

Other than that, I find it tough to make the case for a legitimate reason to program a hacky NAS in a legitimate public safety subscriber radio. It's always going to be a workaround for something someone doesn't want to deal with. As Kevin said, if you have a legitimate need to monitor/operate with adjacent agencies/systems, then you should have an ID, period.

 

[Outerdog]

So you can monitor adjacent agencies from a scan list containing two (or more) systems where both systems are legitimately in the radio.

Think of the alternative: if the radio had to affiliate to the system to scan the talk group, it would be too slow to function properly and create a bunch of registration and de-registration traffic. I get that scanning two trunking systems is not appreciably fast and probably doesn't have much use by front line.

No affiliate scan is by design, courtesy of Motorola (despite what our local inventor says).

 

[nikronzo]

Thanks, but that doesn’t answer my question. 😁

I don't have a correct answer, I am just attempting to show that some manufacturers see value in having a real non affiliate scan built in. If there wasnt a legit case for it, why would they provide the function. As GTR said so well as he always does, the world of radio and more specifically are certainly a tangled web to navigate with many uphill battles and self righteous, uptight, power hungry pr**ks along the path.

 

[GTR8000]

So you can monitor adjacent agencies from a scan list containing two (or more) systems where both systems are legitimately in the radio.

Think of the alternative: if the radio had to affiliate to the system to scan the talk group, it would be too slow to function properly and create a bunch of registration and de-registration traffic. I get that scanning two trunking systems is not appreciably fast and probably doesn't have much use by front line.

No affiliate scan is by design, courtesy of Motorola.

Yeah but that's not really non-affiliate scan in the sense Kevin is asking about. You're talking about Multi-System Talkgroup or Intelligent Priority scan, however that's not wholly "non-affiliate" scanning. If you have either type of scan list slaved to a trunking personality, then the radio is indeed registering and affiliating on one of the systems that are programmed.

 

[Outerdog]

If you have either type of scan list slaved to a trunking personality, then the radio is indeed registering and affiliating on one of the systems that are programmed.

Yes, but it's no-affiliate scanning the other, is it not? I get what you're saying, but it is this functionality which produces the byproduct we call NAS.

 

[mrsvensven]

Yes, but it's no-affiliate scanning the other, is it not? I get what you're saying, but it is this functionality which produces the byproduct we call NAS.

Technically, yes. But multi system scan (at least in a Motorola) doesn't have priority and the radio doesn't roam right either. So it has no business being used by anyone other than a hobbiest.

 

[MTS2000des]

Technically, yes. But multi system scan (at least in a Motorola) doesn't have priority and the radio doesn't roam right either. So it has no business being used by anyone other than a hobbiest.

Not true, Intelligent Priority Scan does and will allow trunked talkgroups on non-affiliated sites/systems to be a priority member of an IPS scan list on an APX.

 

[Outerdog]

Technically, yes.

Well then that's good enough for me. Look, all I’m saying is that the fact that NAS works is by design and is intentional. It’s not an accident and not a mistake. The usefulness or suitability of it for a particular purpose is obviously debatable. It wasn’t put there for whackers, that’s all.

 

[GTR8000]

Well then that's good enough for me. Look, all I’m saying is that the fact that NAS works is by design and is intentional. It’s not an accident and not a mistake. The usefulness or suitability of it for a particular purpose is obviously debatable. It wasn’t put there for whackers, that’s all.

Multi-system scan was intentional, it was never intended as a way to avoid registration/affiliation by parking on a conventional channel. You're kinda sorta conflating the two concepts.

I have personally setup multi-system scan lists (using Intelligent Priority) in an APX to scan between two systems. The subscriber always registers/affiliates on one of the systems, never sits on a conventional channel. The subscriber is authorized on both systems, and the multi-system scan is provided as a means of casually monitoring activity on both with the caveat that transmissions will be missed while sitting on that particular channel (a dedicated channel/personality in the subscriber makes it clear that it's multi-system scan).

Oh yeah and as for the Intelligent Priority scan type in the APX series...yes, it allows you to flag two channels (talkgroups or conventional) as Pri1 and Pri2, however it's very important to understand that trunking priority is only going to work within whichever system the subscriber is currently decoding (either dwelling on the control channel for ~2 seconds or in the middle of a transmission). It has absolutely zero awareness of the activity on the other system. This should be obvious, but to some it's not, so it bears repeating. If both of your priority channels are on System A, and the subscriber is dwelling on System B...you effectively have no priority during that timeframe.

 

[dickie757]

I am still learning, but since a radio cannot affiliate on two or more systems simultaneously, it lets the subscriber "stay" affiliated on their home system. No hobby stuff involved

 

[otobmark]

You cannot use it for serious work since the non affiliated channels in the scan cannot pull traffic to the site they are listening to but can only hope some other subscribers are affiliated on the TG’s on the site they are monitoring. If everything is simulcast then maybe more reliable. In site trunking I wouldn’t want the merely curious pulling traffic to any site (potential busy out). All that said, if fast affiliated scan were to be an industry need then I’m sure it could be done by clever code at system level.

 

[mancow]

So you can monitor adjacent agencies.

No but seriously, since we live in the real world and not a perfect world, there are times where the people running the adjacent county or town's TRS might be an absolute PIA to deal with, and so agencies wind up finding workarounds if they want to monitor them. There is one county around these parts in particular who are absolute d-bags when it comes to getting an ID on their system for outside agencies, and basically make you sign your first born over to them before they'll even consider the request. It's a real problem when it comes to the so-called INTEROPERABILITY that P25 systems were supposed to be encouraging (lol).

Is it the right way to do things? Nope, not at all. Is it sketchy af and legally troublesome to generate a system key (for an MSI subscriber, at least)? Yup. Does it happen anyway, even at unofficially official levels (i.e. by system admins/radio techs)? Sure as hell does.

And before the usual small crowd of Super Sysadmins chime in with the same stuff they've posted on these forums hundreds of times...get over it/yourselves. You know it happens even if it makes your blood boil as you sit in front of GenWatch all day and night salivating at the thought of catching some poor schmuck accidentally affiliating with your precious system. Not everyone is as perfect as you are, believe it or not, nor do we live in an ideal world.

This. All of it.

 

[chrismol1]

Wasn't multi-system scan checkbox added to the XTS/XTL series in the early or later years? But NAS as in sitting on a conventional channel with an active scan list of trunked talkgroups, was functional in the early days of trunking radios.

I was under the impression it was created back in the day when agencies were conventional 800 with a neighbor trunked or vice versa. They could have a channel set aside for mixed scan list. Set the system scan time to 1,2,3 whatever. Us NAS scanners can set the system search time to 255 as we don't care about the conventional channel but the default of 1,2,3 sec was for that purpose

 

[GTR8000]

Wasn't multi-system scan checkbox added to the XTS/XTL series in the early or later years? But NAS as in sitting on a conventional channel with an active scan list of trunked talkgroups, was functional in the early days of trunking radios.

I was under the impression it was created back in the day when agencies were conventional 800 with a neighbor trunked or vice versa. They could have a channel set aside for mixed scan list. Set the system scan time to 1,2,3 whatever. Us NAS scanners can set the system search time to 255 as we don't care about the conventional channel but the default of 1,2,3 sec was for that purpose

There is no checkbox for Multi-System Talkgroup scan...it's a completely separate type of scan list type vs Priority Monitor or Conventional (same goes for the more modern Intelligent Priority in the APX series).

Setting the system search time (effectively the dwell time) to 255 seconds is fine if you only care about scanning a single trunked system, but you definitely want to leave it defaulted to 2 seconds if you want to actually monitor the conventional channel and/or more than a single trunked system.

 

[chrismol1]

There is no checkbox for Multi-System Talkgroup scan...it's a completely separate type of scan list type vs Priority Monitor or Conventional (same goes for the more modern Intelligent Priority in the APX series).

Setting the system search time (effectively the dwell time) to 255 seconds is fine if you only care about scanning a single trunked system, but you definitely want to leave it defaulted to 2 seconds if you want to actually monitor the conventional channel and/or more than a single trunked system.

I'm going way back before APX, elroy mentions back in the 90s when he did it, I was referencing XTS/XTL checkbox, wasn't scanning multi-system trunked wasn't an option early on in the XTS/XTL software but sitting on a conventional with trunked talkgroups was an option and previous legacy radios, saber/mts2000 etc. Seems it could have been a feature that was included back then and carried on to this day for purposes I've previous stated.

 

[AF1UD]

What options are there for NAS in a multiband HT? Just Harris and BK right?