Talk Group help

[ghayon]

I currently own a Uniden trunktracker and am trying to figure out how to scan for all the available talk groups in my area. I also have a few questions about talk groups specifically:

1) What does a talk group ID look like? On radioreference's main page they are in decimal format, how would I convert to its regular format?

2) Are all the talk groups associated to my area located on radioreference's page?

3) Is it illegal to scan for talk groups?

Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

Edit: I own a 780XLT.

 

[ka3jjz]

GHayon wrote:

1) What does a talk group ID look like? On radioreference's main page they are in decimal format, how would I convert to its regular format?

In most cases they are shown in both hexadecimal (16 bit - often used by professional radios) and decimal. For programming your 780, ignore the hex.

2) Are all the talk groups associated to my area located on radioreference's page?

Yup - unless newer ones have shown up in your area that haven't been entered yet (always possible). It would be easier to answer this one more fully if we knew where you are - city/county/state will do nicely. Check in with your state's forum (and associated scanning email lists, such as those found on Yahoo) to find out more.

3) Is it illegal to scan for talk groups?

Nope, scan away.

73 Mike

 

[ghayon]

Thank you, I am located in Toronto. I went to radioreference's page with all the available talk groups in my area, however I'm trying to find out how to actually obtain a list of talk group ids with his scanner.

Is that possible?

Do I have to manually go through each possible talk group id and just get lucky?

So you can conclude that all the talk groups that I can possibly find are in the Toronto page?

Edit: More accurately I'm in the city of Vaughn.

Edit 2 : Also, what are LCN's? Thanks so much for your help.

 

[Bill_White]

ID Tracker

Go to the Baton Rouge Area Scanning page and get ID Tracker:
http://bellsouthpwp.net/k/d/kd5eis/IDTracker/IDTracker.htm
Make sure you get version v3.11 which supports the 780 (top of page).
NOT ID Tracker II for newer scanners.
It’s free and makes identifying new talkgroups a bit easier.

 

[ka3jjz]

There's one or two Ontario based Yahoo scanning lists that may have more information. In fact I'd also recommend going to the Eastern Canada forum and asking...there may well be talkgroups that no one has sent to the database team as yet. Always a possibility. You can conclude that all talkgroups that have been reported to the team are entered on the database page. You can find the URLs for these groups here...(anything in blue or underlined is a link)

http://wiki.radioreference.com/index.php/Canada

When you say 'obtain a list of talkgroups', are you looking to program your 780? Programming talkgroups manually is certainly possible, but software known as ProScan - and a premium subscription - will allow you to dump the database entries into the software, and then from there into your 780.

http://www.proscan.org/index.htm

http://www.radioreference.com/apps/subscription/

73 Mike