Unitrunker display question on P25 system

[HM1529]

What am I seeing here where patches are added and dropped quickly one after another? This happens almost every day. The 63xxx groups seem to be random every time. I have rarely heard any audio traffic on the 14xxx groups. So far, the 14xxx groups are limited to a small pool. When I have heard voice traffic, it has all been from one county (the only county using OpenSky in PA). So, my supposition is that the 14xxx talkgroups are the P25 map of the county's OpenSky talkgroups. These patches always appear and disappear in a short time (minutes or less) and, therefore, do not show up in the patch list so that I can see what is actually patched together.

I have no idea what the 1965 group is, although it has recently shown up as patched to the main talkgroup used on this system (TG 37). Unlike the above mentioned brief patches, this patch sticks around and is showing up in the patch list. This P25 system is an overlay for air units to tie into Pennsylvania's current statewide OpenSky system.

 

[GTR8000]

Harris systems tend to act strangely when patches are used, reportedly creating supergroups using random TGID's from a pool that can change/rotate frequently.

I'm not that well versed on Harris P25, being much more familiar with Motorola ASTRO 25, so perhaps someone with more Harris experience can chime in and explain in further detail.

 

[HM1529]

I do understand about the large random pool of 6xxxx groups. What puzzles me is why there is this frequent flurry of activity with adds and drops. I don't know what is going on there. Since I have been actively logging the past few weeks, there is never voice activity.

Unfortunately, the times I did record voice traffic on a couple of the 14xxx groups on my PSR-800, I was not also logging with Unitrunker, so I could not see how things looked in the software to compare to the voice traffic.

 

[HM1529]

Here is another grab from a few days ago....

 

[GTR8000]

I wonder if the patches are created automatically based on affiliations. That could explain why they are appearing, but no voice activity being noted.

I hate to speculate wildly, but since the 700 MHz system is primarily for aircraft, could it be that as they fly through various zones and affiliate with different sites, it's creating and tearing down patches automatically?

 

[HM1529]

I wonder if the patches are created automatically based on affiliations. That could explain why they are appearing, but no voice activity being noted.

I hate to speculate wildly, but since the 700 MHz system is primarily for aircraft, could it be that as they fly through various zones and affiliate with different sites, it's creating and tearing down patches automatically?

I should add for folks unfamiliar, this is a 10 site P25 system and most talkgroups only appear on the site with which an aircraft is currently affiliated. Based on sharing notes with other folks around the state, the only talkgroup that seems to appear statewide is the main air channel (TG 37) for the state police aircraft. This can lead to times where you might get 10 minutes of logging activity that disappears as suddenly as it arrived when the aircraft hops affiliations from one tower to another for whatever reason.