Good Morning ,
In Sentinel were it say's EDACS TGID Format what should that be AFS Format or Decimal ? Thank you.
The default, in Sentinel & the scanner when first shipped, is usually the Decimal format. However, using AFS instead gives you an option not available if using Decimal talkgroups. (That setting is under Display Options in the Sentinel Profile Editor, as well as in the scanner's menu.)
For the AFS talkgroups, they are in the format of AA-FFS. The first two numbers (the AA) are the Agency. The first two numbers of the suffix( FF) are the Fleet, with the last one (S) being the Sub-Fleet (S) sub-section of the Fleet. (It's a deprecated system, no longer in use, but the TGID structure is still an example of what I am suggesting.)
If you look at the various Police groups,
all of their talkgroups start with '02-', with the three number suffix detailing the use within that 'fleet'. For Fire TGIDs, all start with '04'.
If you were looking for additional Police talkgroups that are not in the database, one option would be to use
ID Search when scanning the system. But that's going to find
new talkgroups for any agency if you use the Decimal TGID format. So you might end up with a lot of Public Works or Utilities TGIDs that were not programmed. But if you use the AFS structure for talkgroups instead of decimal, you could enter just
02-, which serves as a wildcard for
only Police talkgroups. You would not see other unlisted Fire, Public Works, Utilities, nor any other Department. Similarly, if you instead were looking for Fire TGIDs, then enter a
04-.