We were all there at one point. Every single one of us.
Mason (and others that find themselves here)
- Analog: old way of transmitting
- Digital: new way of transmitting (remember when we all had to get boxes for the old tv's? Kind of like that. Notice how you have to have an XM/Sirius capable car radio and not just FM? Same thing)
- Unencrypted: Audio you can understand
- Encrypted: Audio that is intentionally garbled and you cannot understand, and generally cannot fix to be able to understand it.
- Conventional: old way of communicating. Radio to radios close together, or radio to radios spread further out via a device called a repeater
- Trunking: How TACN works. Instead of a small computer in a radio, now it is a networked computer system for audio over IP that just happens to have a wireless (radio) segment.
You have to have a digital, P25 Phase II capable appliance in order to monitor unencrypted channel TACN.
You will need to program several types of data for every tower you wish to receive from into your scanning appliance (hope you're not trying to alter an actual LMR transceiver for this purpose).
Once programmed, you or the scanner selects a tower, you will then receive everything that tower emits.
If you do not program the scanner exactly correct, either it will flat not work, or it will sort of work but be very frustrating.
If you bought the same kind of radio as the people you want to listen to, and you mess that up, you will interfere with the statewide system, and there are ways to figure out it is you.
If the stars align and miracles upon miracles occur, and you've gotten everything correct, from that point, then you can pick talkgroups you wish to monitor.
IF a authorized person's radio doesn't utilize the tower you are listening to, you will not be able to hear that talkgroup. Ever.
For instance, back in the beginning, there was a corrections supervisor that worked in one county, and lived in another county a couple hours drive. He took his radio home and listened. The people scanning his tower could hear prison talk... and there was no prison there.
Some counties are mountainous. So, you may be next door to both the stinky creek VFD AND a TACN tower, but because of the terrain, their stuff
may prioritize another tower... and if that happens, you
may not hear them.
If you are on an interstate, you may very well hear some crazy stuff as authorized users go to Nashville and back home, or depending on the TACN settings, even they may not be able to listen outside of their geofenced area.
So, there are no control or other frequencies that are slaved to a particular talkgroup in general. You pick the transmitting features and the channel lineup for the tower nearest you, then you can load the TG's of interest.
All of this falls apart when the entity starts using old interop channels, or elect to use old but still-licensed channels allotted to them for whatever reason. Or in-fight and choose to use a local system that isn't TACN.
There are scanning appliances that will program themselves, and there are people that will hammer out a fleetmap for your scanner for a price, some people are better than others at it.
Caveats: This is a general, wide overview discussion. It isn't meant to address all peculiarities. Do not develop heartburn, do not insert rectally, read the patient insert and call your prescribing tower monkey if side effects occur.
Good luck, this hobby used to be a lot of fun!
