P25 Talkgroup ID's showing up during scanning

[PhillyPewPew]

Hey all,
I live in Philadelphia, PA and I am just getting back into the monitoring scene with a 396XT. Here is what I did so far, I subscribed to RR as I know it's the easiest way to set up a radio up and all went good except I am recieving transmissions from strange Talkgroup numbers showing up while scanning.
Please bear with me as I am a little rusty and havent used a scanner in 11 years!
Here is what I got so far, I have a system called Philadelphia with 2 sites, 1 called Simulcast Zone 1 for Fire and other county utilities and I have another site called Simulcast Zone 2 for Police only. This is how I downloaded it from RR and I just changed the quickkeys.
Here is my delima... I am recieving transmissions from Talkgroup ID's that are not on my lists and I cannot identify what or who they are!?! Under my Site/Trunk System Parameters the ID Mode is set to Search. Could it be searchiing for other Talkgroups on the same Trunking frequencies? Would changing the ID Mode to scan correct my situation by only scanning the talkgroups that I have on my lists instead of searchimg for all available ID's?
Your thoughts and ideas would be appreciated.

 

[WA0CBW]

Yes.

 

[doctordialtone]

ID Mode is set to Search. Could it be searchiing for other Talkgroups on the same Trunking frequencies?

Yes. In "ID Search" mode you will see talk groups you didn't program .

ID Scan mode is what you want.

 

[u2brent]

FYI,

Philadelphia Trunking System, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Philadelphia Trunking System Profile

www.radioreference.com

TG 613 is not an unknown TG..

 

[doctordialtone]

613 is Police

 

[ScubaJungle]

ID Search will show all talk groups, even ones not in the database.
Since it seems that this one is in the DB - you may not have the latest update.

Also, Im not sure why you would want to be in ID Scan, and restricted to only seeing TGs that are in the DB, as I can almost guarantee that there are more TGs than what is in the DB (unless you only want to listen to your district/ certain TGs/police/ etc, in which case that's exactly what you would do), so I would recommend leaving it as you have it and just adding identifying names to the TG as you go - and possibly submitting them to the DB.

In case you didn't know - TGs can change, new ones can pop up, undocumented and rarely used ones can appear for special events, circumstances, etc., so make sure you know that you may be limiting your scanning range significantly by switching to ID scan instead of ID search as you are on now. For example - the recent protests brought a lot of use to different/new TGs in many areas - many that were either rarely used. or entirely new and undocumented. Dispatch and info channels may still be used, but, in my case, as well as for many other areas around the country, there were many TGs that popped up that were dedicated to coordinating and keeping track of what was going on.

YOu can have it both ways - what I suggest to do is to make separate favorite lists with the same system - so one with ID search on for all traffic, and another with ID scan, only for your district's police/fire (or whatever it is you want to isolate). That way, if something is going on, all you have to do is switch favorites lists from your FL on ID Scan to the "All" FL with ID Search and thus ensure that you are not missing any traffic, as you would in ID scan - and then after, you can shut that FL, and just switch back to your streamlined favorites list on ID Scan.

 

[doctordialtone]

what I suggest to do is to make separate favorite lists with the same system

That scanner doesn't use "Favorite Lists".

@hvytrucker

You can either maintain 2 files for the scanner or set up different systems and groups and toggle them on and off as needed using Quick Keys

About Quick Keys:
Easier to Read BCD396XT Digital Scanner Manual quick keys