PassPort Trunking

[Julian1]

Anyone familiar with this. I did a Passport Trunking search and saw a press release with Motorola and Trident...who appartently owns the rights to PassPort Trunking Technology.

Can this protocol be followed with a scanner?

Julian
(A very happy 780 owner)

 

[LTR]

There are quite a few PassPort systems out there, mostly business users, but some public safety.

It is an enhanced version of LTR that Trident created and has licensed to multiple manufacturers to make radios, the biggest ones being Kenwood and Motorola.

As far as I know, there are no scanners available to track it yet, but I am sure there is no reason one could not be made in the future.

 

[SCPD]

passport

i was told that passport is a security item for the system. it is like a electronic serial number for the radio- similar to cellphones used today. if the system does not see the correct serial number- it does not let it into the system. i was told this by someone in the know. i do beleive that a passport system can be monitored, but i do not know this from experience.

 

[crayon]

i do beleive that a passport system can be monitored, but i do not know this from experience.

Hey guys .. might want to mosey on over to:

http://www.trunkedradio.net/groups/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=27

and check out what is going on with several LTR decoder projects currently under development.

 

[INDY72]

Some of us would love to see a new scanner that can do LTR-Regular, LTR-MultiNET, and LTR-Passport. Not going to get location specific, but in my state thier are Public Safety systems using all three flavors.

As to who owns the "patented" flavors: EF Johnson is the original owner, though both Johnson, and Motorola make all three types of LTR capable radios for all the bands (VHF, UHF, 800, and 900). Not sure if Tyco/MA-COM makes anything that can interop on LTR. As it stands right now, there is not a single scanner in the planning that I know of that will have MultiNET, or Passport ability. Maybe once they get the EDACS PROVoice done, they will focus on the LTR's.

 

[DaveNF2G]

I'm sure this is mentioned somewhere, but I can't figure out which thread.

What does a Passport system sound like as far as LTR-specific signaling?

 

[INDY72]

When monitored vias a scanner: Every second or so on the repeaters you hear this ZZZT sound like someone pressing then releasing the mic. This is the data signal being sent out on the net to all radios, etc that are on the system. Upon trying to just program in the Control freqs only not the repeaters, you get nothing, no sounds... so you have to listen to the repeaters and deal with the ZZZT ZZZT ZZZT , whn you monitor. One way to keep the ZZZT shgort is to turn your squelch all the way to its minimum setting, this keeps it to a ZT not a ZZZZZT. I kow it sounds funny, but its the price we pay right now, untill someone gets a scanner that can monitor and track all the LTR types/flavors out there.

 

[DaveNF2G]

When monitored vias a scanner: Every second or so on the repeaters you hear this ZZZT sound like someone pressing then releasing the mic. This is the data signal being sent out on the net to all radios, etc that are on the system. Upon trying to just program in the Control freqs only not the repeaters, you get nothing, no sounds... so you have to listen to the repeaters and deal with the ZZZT ZZZT ZZZT , whn you monitor. One way to keep the ZZZT shgort is to turn your squelch all the way to its minimum setting, this keeps it to a ZT not a ZZZZZT. I kow it sounds funny, but its the price we pay right now, untill someone gets a scanner that can monitor and track all the LTR types/flavors out there.

So Passport has a "control" channel? I ask because I want to beta test the Passport feature on some software. There is a local UHF repeater that sends a "dead carrier" pulse every few seconds, like plain LTR, but the pulse is quite long. I've never heard anything that sounds like buzzing or other modulation. LTrunker identifies the signal as LTR, but never gets any information from it (channel number or anything else).

 

[PanJurekMrJerry]

Isn't ESAS a form of LTR trunking? Also is there any Digital LTR trunking out there?

 

[INDY72]

No LTR has no control chan so to speak the logic is spread throughout all the repeaters and data is sent subaudibly on normal LTR systems though on PASSPort systems the data blips are heard as that ZZZT sound on every repeater. And as to digital I would imagine that yes there are digital LTR systems out there, as digital is the wave of the future and APCO-P-25 is the "suggested" standard for all communications in the future. I have not heard of any yet, but would guess the most likely would be a PASSPort, or MULTINet stype system.

 

[DaveNF2G]

So Passport has a "control" channel? I ask because I want to beta test the Passport feature on some software. There is a local UHF repeater that sends a "dead carrier" pulse every few seconds, like plain LTR, but the pulse is quite long. I've never heard anything that sounds like buzzing or other modulation. LTrunker identifies the signal as LTR, but never gets any information from it (channel number or anything else).

More detail on this mystery signal:

The pattern is about one-quarter second blip, 5 seconds of carrier (with an occasional very faint AFSK-like sound), 4 seconds of silence, then the cycle repeats.

LTrunker 3.84 beta ec2 identifies it as LTR, slicermode is NORMAL, and I have received a channel indication of 0x005. I have also heard very infrequent voice transmissions that always sound like they're doubling with another carrier. During voice traffic, FREE channels 0x001, 0x003, and 0x00b have been announced.

Oddly enough, most of the talkgroups indicate a HOME channel of 03, but almost all transmissions occur on channel 05.

 

[RFphreeq]

Doesn't get very technical, but in case you want more to look at.
http://www.tridentms.com/PassPort.jsp
Enjoy

 

[WayneH]

A simple explanation of how standard LTR and Passport differ are Passport offers better user management. You have incredibly better control of what user's get to do on the system. So to allow that the addressing system has to be changed to allow radio ids, etc to exist. This changes the data stream enough that scanners can no longer pick out the standard LTR data (all technical aspects aside).

FYI, that burst on an idle LTR freq can be turned off and is on many systems but YMMV. There's also the "chuff" sound as a subscriber keys up.

And no, there are no digital LTR systems. LTR works off subaudible data that really is useless when dealing with a digital carrier since you have overhead data to carry this info within. LTR was such a bare bones form of trunking no one has taken the concept and updated it to today's digital standards. If someone made the effort it wouldn't resemble any feature of the LTR protocol in any way there is so much to rework.

-Wayne