STARS on Fork Mtn

[jackhack]

I'm in Charlottesville and I receive Fork Mtn very well, but I'm puzzled why we receive some, but not all, Richmond VSP traffic. Is it because some radios are assigned to Fork Mtn? I realize Culpeper and Appotomatox are not up yet. Do you think they'll be picked by Fork Mtn?
Jack

 

[K4APR]

I'm in Charlottesville and I receive Fork Mtn very well, but I'm puzzled why we receive some, but not all, Richmond VSP traffic. Is it because some radios are assigned to Fork Mtn? I realize Culpeper and Appotomatox are not up yet. Do you think they'll be picked by Fork Mtn?
Jack

They way Moto SmartZone works, the talkgroup will only be assigned a working channel on a site, where there is a user logged into that site, with that talkgroup selected. This is done to conserve resources (channels) and put un-needed air time on a station. Either way, if no one (STARS user) is there to listen, there is no reason to waste the channel with a grant.

Basically, when you hear Richmond traffic, there is someone registered with Fork Mnt. using that talk group. I even get that here on the Eastern Shore. There are times when a unit here on the ES is on a Richmond talkgroup (for some reason) and that talkgroup audio is now routed through my closest site to me. Its then I hear Richmond traffic. As soon as that unit switches from that talkgroup and no one else is using it as well, at that site, I will loose any future traffic.

EDIT: Since all scanners are passive (receive only) devices, there is no way for the site to know you are there and register you as a user on a talkgroup.

 

[gcgrotz]

I hear a lot of Game units on their talk group coming through Fork Mtn too. Usually they are checking in with the Richmond office HQ.

 

[rfburns]

A zone controller could be programmed with a particular TG to always transmit on a particular site whether there is an affiliated radio or not. That helps with the scan function. For instance if a user switches to a Tac ch and for whatever reason leaves the radio on the Tac TG (maybe he just forgets to switch back to dispatch) he would not hear a call for him on the dispatch ch if there wasn't another user affiliated on that same site. It is usually beneficial to have primary TG's transmit all the time on sites which have a lot of affiliations on that TG. There are pros and cons. Cons, could be increased system busies especially when many STARS sites only have 3 voice chs available.

You do have to be selective in where you program a TG to always transmit. For instance, you wouldn't want RIC1 or 2 to always be transmitting on Pinnacle.