coyote1964
Member
- Joined
- Sep 4, 2004
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Greetings,
In light of the pending doom for Florida, I broke out my old Pro-46 Scanner only to realize that times have changed and what used to be fairly simple and straightforward in the scanning world now requires a rocket science degree to understand.
I spent some time online and on these forums but still had some questions and was hoping you more seasoned folks might be able to indulge me. Basically, I want to see if I understand some of these concepts, so I'm gonna spout what I think I know and welcome your corrections. Apologies if this information was posted somewhere and I just didn't see it.
----
Ok, back in the olden days, if you wanted to listen to local police, for example, you would just type in the frequency on the scanner and hit ENTER and listen to the police.
Then at some point, the 800Mhz frequencies were being used more and I had to ditch my scanner for one that could listen to 800Mhz frequencies. And still, no problem...put in the frequency and listen.
Ok, so for example, let's say here I am, at Bob's Taxi Cab Company and I have 5 frequencies that I own/rent or whatever for all my employees to talk across. 3 of them have super heavy traffic with everyone stepping on top of each other and the other two don't have hardly any traffic.
Now, someone comes along and says, "What if we were able to take those 5 frequencies and use them all at the same time and spread traffic evenly across them? (Trunking) When Habib presses his TALK button, the computer will randomly choose one of the 5 frequencies to carry his call for the duration of the call.
Ok, so these 5 frequencies will now be shared by all employees in Bob's Taxi Cab Company, but Bob's Mechanics will not want to have to listen to Bob's Cab Drivers, so we can actually group specific radios based upon what the people using them do for Bob's Cab Company (i.e. Talk Groups)
This way, only people within the Talk Group will be able to hear conversations from others in the same talk group.
So I might now divide my radio system into talk groups that look like the following:
Bob's Cab Drivers - Talk Group 10001
Bob's Cab Mechanics - Talk Group 10002
Bob's Dispatchers - Talk Group 10003
etc.
Ok radio gurus...how am I doing so far?
At this point, as Bob's radio support person, I know I have to do something with fleet maps, whatever those are, I still can't figure that point out, like what the heck block and size codes are...Does size really matter?
So let's switch back to me, the noob scanner listener. I have to try and take the information above and program into something that makes sense in my scanner so I can actually listen. In actuality, I have a chart with all that information for the Walt Disney Property in Orlando that I want to program but aren't sure how to do it.
So taking my limited knowledge, my new Pro-95 Scanner with all kinds of stuff pre-programmed, and a boatload of AA batteries (and some strong whiskey since the hurricane is almost here) it's time to put this info into my scanner.
Ok, this scanner holds 1000 channels. That means 10 banks of 100 channels (frequencies). That tells me I have 1000 slots to put information into.
So first I have to find a blank bank, say Bank 8. I then have to create a Trunk, tell the scanner what type (Motorola Type I), then I have to do something with fleet maps, whatever those are, and then at some point, I plug in this list of 18 frequencies.
Now, assuming I did this properly (which there is no hope in hell of doing because the manual was written for a Nasa tech) I would hit Scan and the scanner would scan stopping on any of those frequencies when it heard a transmission. So if I stopped the scanner and listened to just one of those frequencies, I might hear many different conversations because of the multiple talk groups that might talk across that particular frequency.
So then, logically, I must somehow be able to take this trunk that I've programmed, and be able to tell it that I only want to listen to specific talk groups. This would allow the scanner to keep scanning all the frequencies within the defined trunk and only stop on the specific Talk Group(s) that I want to listen to.
Ok, for specifics, the Disney Trunk system that I want to program is a Type I 800Mhz Motorola trunk. I have the listing of about 18 channels and a huge list of talk groups. I only want to listen to a few select groups, however.
WOAH....Remember, I'm a Noob.
If you're read this far, then God Bless you. That's what I think I understand about this new world scanning.
If anyone can correct anything above, please feel free to do so. I'm assuming if I get one of the software packages out there, that will make programming the scanner (and maybe understanding the trunking concepts) a little easier.
I've attached a PDF file of the specific Trunk information I'm trying to decipher, to this forum msg.
Thank you for any help you can provide and if there are any other Florida folks out there, please stay safe,
Ron Jaffe
In light of the pending doom for Florida, I broke out my old Pro-46 Scanner only to realize that times have changed and what used to be fairly simple and straightforward in the scanning world now requires a rocket science degree to understand.
I spent some time online and on these forums but still had some questions and was hoping you more seasoned folks might be able to indulge me. Basically, I want to see if I understand some of these concepts, so I'm gonna spout what I think I know and welcome your corrections. Apologies if this information was posted somewhere and I just didn't see it.
----
Ok, back in the olden days, if you wanted to listen to local police, for example, you would just type in the frequency on the scanner and hit ENTER and listen to the police.
Then at some point, the 800Mhz frequencies were being used more and I had to ditch my scanner for one that could listen to 800Mhz frequencies. And still, no problem...put in the frequency and listen.
Ok, so for example, let's say here I am, at Bob's Taxi Cab Company and I have 5 frequencies that I own/rent or whatever for all my employees to talk across. 3 of them have super heavy traffic with everyone stepping on top of each other and the other two don't have hardly any traffic.
Now, someone comes along and says, "What if we were able to take those 5 frequencies and use them all at the same time and spread traffic evenly across them? (Trunking) When Habib presses his TALK button, the computer will randomly choose one of the 5 frequencies to carry his call for the duration of the call.
Ok, so these 5 frequencies will now be shared by all employees in Bob's Taxi Cab Company, but Bob's Mechanics will not want to have to listen to Bob's Cab Drivers, so we can actually group specific radios based upon what the people using them do for Bob's Cab Company (i.e. Talk Groups)
This way, only people within the Talk Group will be able to hear conversations from others in the same talk group.
So I might now divide my radio system into talk groups that look like the following:
Bob's Cab Drivers - Talk Group 10001
Bob's Cab Mechanics - Talk Group 10002
Bob's Dispatchers - Talk Group 10003
etc.
Ok radio gurus...how am I doing so far?
At this point, as Bob's radio support person, I know I have to do something with fleet maps, whatever those are, I still can't figure that point out, like what the heck block and size codes are...Does size really matter?
So let's switch back to me, the noob scanner listener. I have to try and take the information above and program into something that makes sense in my scanner so I can actually listen. In actuality, I have a chart with all that information for the Walt Disney Property in Orlando that I want to program but aren't sure how to do it.
So taking my limited knowledge, my new Pro-95 Scanner with all kinds of stuff pre-programmed, and a boatload of AA batteries (and some strong whiskey since the hurricane is almost here) it's time to put this info into my scanner.
Ok, this scanner holds 1000 channels. That means 10 banks of 100 channels (frequencies). That tells me I have 1000 slots to put information into.
So first I have to find a blank bank, say Bank 8. I then have to create a Trunk, tell the scanner what type (Motorola Type I), then I have to do something with fleet maps, whatever those are, and then at some point, I plug in this list of 18 frequencies.
Now, assuming I did this properly (which there is no hope in hell of doing because the manual was written for a Nasa tech) I would hit Scan and the scanner would scan stopping on any of those frequencies when it heard a transmission. So if I stopped the scanner and listened to just one of those frequencies, I might hear many different conversations because of the multiple talk groups that might talk across that particular frequency.
So then, logically, I must somehow be able to take this trunk that I've programmed, and be able to tell it that I only want to listen to specific talk groups. This would allow the scanner to keep scanning all the frequencies within the defined trunk and only stop on the specific Talk Group(s) that I want to listen to.
Ok, for specifics, the Disney Trunk system that I want to program is a Type I 800Mhz Motorola trunk. I have the listing of about 18 channels and a huge list of talk groups. I only want to listen to a few select groups, however.
WOAH....Remember, I'm a Noob.
If you're read this far, then God Bless you. That's what I think I understand about this new world scanning.
If anyone can correct anything above, please feel free to do so. I'm assuming if I get one of the software packages out there, that will make programming the scanner (and maybe understanding the trunking concepts) a little easier.
I've attached a PDF file of the specific Trunk information I'm trying to decipher, to this forum msg.
Thank you for any help you can provide and if there are any other Florida folks out there, please stay safe,
Ron Jaffe
