Wildcards and IDs

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daggit

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I hope this makes sense and can get an explanation from someone. I'm learning about trunking systems, Id's ect. Anyways I'm using win500 and when I uploaded freqs from RR to my ws1065 I set most everything to wildcards. I'm getting police traffic on fire IDs and and the reverse on other IDs. Example. I have traffic on an ID 10907 that shows up in both my alpha tags as XXXfire and xxxpolce on different scan lists but has the same ID. Is this because I'm using wildcards? My scan lists of fire departments are picking up both police and fire and my scan list of police departments is dong the same thing. Is that because I'm using wildcards? I would rather not get police traffic on my fire lists and vice versa. Hope some one will have the patience to set me straight. Over the weekend I'm going to try and read as much as I can on trunking systems
 

mejnetguru

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If you have added a TG wildcard to a scanlist (and the scanlist is enabled) then you will hear all traffic on the system. If you have setup a "fire" scanlist with "fire" related TGs but also have the TG wildcard in the same list, then yes, you would hear everything on that system.
 

daggit

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ok thank you kinda what I thought. I know there are advantages to using a wild card but maybe I need to reload the scan lists with out an wildcard. back many years ago when we didn't have trunking I had my old scanner banks divided between police, medical, fire ect so if something happened I could shut off the other bank and focus on the traffic I was interested in.
 

Swipesy

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ok thank you kinda what I thought. I know there are advantages to using a wild card but maybe I need to reload the scan lists with out an wildcard. back many years ago when we didn't have trunking I had my old scanner banks divided between police, medical, fire ect so if something happened I could shut off the other bank and focus on the traffic I was interested in.

This is still the case with scanners. You can have a Scanlist with just police Talkgroups, another Scanlist for fire etc. Be careful of using Wildcards. You are telling the scanner to pickup everything it hears from garbage trucks to police.

Also your terminology. Talkgroups are the equivalent of the old frequencies. ID's generally refer to the identifier of a specific radio.. So you program in xxxxx- Anyville Pd as a Talkgroup. If you know a specific radio ID for that police TG you can also program in a Alpha Tag for the Radio ID. For instance - xxxxxxx- Chief Jones. Then you will see, depending on what scanner you are using,
Anyville Pd (TG)
Chief Jones (RID)

With no RID programmed but RID's turned on you will see

Anuville Pd (TG)
xxxxxxx (RID)

All Talkgroups and RID's are system specific.
 

daggit

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Ok thank you. So this is why I was getting police traffic and other agencies on my fire talk groups?
 

daggit

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Less traffic without wildcards

I have two scan lists one I have uses wild cards and one without wildcards. I have them programed exactly the same way but the one without wildcards gets less police and fire traffic. Is this because the one with wildcards is picking up traffic that isn't on the RR database?
 

jonwienke

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Yes. Or at least talkgroups on the system that you haven't explicitly programmed, which may be police, fire, dog catchers, bus drivers, garbage collectors, or whoever else is on the system.
 

daggit

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Jon thanks for the reply but I am not getting anything but police and fire with and without wildcards but I have much, much less traffic when I scan without wild cards. I mean with wildcards its almost non stop traffic without wild cards my scanner is pretty quiet. Its driving me nuts because the reason I wanted to scan without wild cards is because I wanted to only get fire traffic on fire IDs and police only on police ids, ect. Any help would be appreciated.
 

jonwienke

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The scanner is working exactly as designed. A wildcard will pick up ALL traffic from every talkgroup that is not explicitly programmed. If you are hearing stuff you don't want to, you will have to program the talkgroup(s) for the dog catchers and garbage collectors and bus drivers and whatever else you don't want to hear, and then lock those talkgroups out so the scanner knows to ignore them. You will have to make note of the talkgroup ID(s) picked up by the wildcard, and add them to your programming once you know what sort of traffic they carry.

You can expedite the process by importing EVERY talkgroup in the system from RadioReference, and then locking out all of the uninteresting ones. That will cut down on the stray talkgroups picked up by the wildcard. If you don't program it, it WILL be picked up by the wildcard and you WILL hear it. The only way to make it go away is to program it and then lock it out.
 

daggit

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Ok here is whats happening (again Im not getting anything but police and fire which is what I want) With wildcards Im checking the ID's and looking on RR and the ID matches up with the agency that is broadcasting so that is fine BUT say said ID is a police ID in city XXX while the ID is correct but the ws1065 is saying its a fire system in a close by town. I programed fire and police in 4 different scan lists one for police in county 1 one for fire county 1, one for police in county 2 and fire in county 2 for four scan lists. It's like Im getting a police ID from county 2 but the system is showing fire county 1 but the ID is correct. Thanks I know it must be something simple just not understanding this.
 

jonwienke

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You have to program the talkgroup in order for the scanner to actually know what it is. If you don't program the talkgroup, the scanner cannot give you the correct label because it doesn't know what it is. Your scanner is simply showing you a random label for talkgroups it doesn't know about.

Program EVERYTHING, and the scanner will display the correct info for the programmed talkgroups.
 

daggit

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I'm programming the control channels and the specific IDs together in the same scan list. Example in winn500 I'm putting in a site then talk groups that belong to that site together in one scan list. Isn't that enough? I know this will all click together soon but getting fusterated. I would just like to put different agencies in different scan lists so I can with them on and off with out doing anything to the other agencies in other scan lists. I know Jon your correct and I'm not doubting you just not understanding this right now. I am picking up police and fire ids not listed in RR that belong to the agencies I want. I can upload everything to my radio but then want to put sort them in different scan lists. Also doesn't really answer my original question of why I get almost no traffic if I don't use wildcards. Again I'm just putting both control channels and IDs together in a scan list for a specific agency then name the system with a custom name Ids are correct but sometimes the system name is from another scan bank and agency. This is making me feel old over 25 years ago when everything was analog I just put police in one bank, fire in another indifferent banks for different cities. I would carry my portable everywhere and could lock out banks and focus on the activity I wanted when stuff went down. Now years later Im getting back into scanning. Actually I'm pretty good with computers and stuff but this is a learning curve for me. Right now I'm listening to my scanner and its perfect except for this one small problem. Once I figure this out I want to customize each id for specific colors and such but cant do that I dont think until the system name matches up with the ID
 

jonwienke

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First of all, you need to get over the notion that talkgroups "belong" to any particular site. Any talkgroup can be transmitted from any site in the system at any time, depending on the purpose of the talkgroup, the geographic area covered by each site, and the boundaries of the service area of the entity using the talkgroup. A talkgroup may be broadcast from one site, a group of sites, or every site in the system. It all depends on the needs of the users and how much redundancy is required (is a backup site needed if the primary site fails?). In some cases, a talkgroup may be broadcast from a site in a neighboring town or county if it provides better coverage. Some sites use directional antennas to send their signal mostly in one direction, and minimize "spillage" outside the intended coverage area (e.g. a site located near the border of a state or county).

Breaking up a system by site and agency is bad programming practice. What you want to do (if your scanner will allow it) is program the entire system, including all sites (at least all sites within reception range of your location) and talkgroups, into one list. Then instead of toggling scanlists on and off, toggle groups of talkgroups within the system on and off instead (Uniden calls them Departments, I forget what Whistler's term is). You may need to move talkgroups from one group to another if the RR database doesn't have them organized to your liking.

Programming the same system multiple times for each site or agency on the system takes longer to scan, takes up more memory, and guarantees you will miss more traffic. When you are scanning one site looking for fire traffic, any PD traffic during that scan will be ignored. And when you scan the same site for PD traffic, fire traffic will be ignored. Programming the entire system together allows you to hear any traffic of interest on a site when you scan the site, regardless of type.
 

daggit

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so your saying is move them into one scan list? What I did is I looked at the sites on RR and clicked on that then looked at the coresponing talk groups and downloaded them together in separate scan lists. I will have to look at how to toggle off talk groups. the easy to read guide on the ws1065 is only showing how to shut off scan lists not TG but I will do some more research. One more stupid question. what do you mean by moving one talk group to another?
 
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DaveNF2G

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Win500 does not do "sites" unless the Multi-Site Option box is checked. Site=System=TSYS (normally)

Talkgroups (TGRP) are associated with a TSYS and placed into Scanlists. The TSYS is "drawn into" a scanlist by the presence of its associated TGRPs there.

The correct way to scan a trunked system with a scanner that uses object-oriented programming is:

1) Create a TSYS object with all of the system channels.
2) Select the TSYS in the TSYS window (upper pane).
3) Create TGRP objects in the TGRP window (lower pane).
3a) Type Group is used for regular talkgroups.
3b) Type Private is used for individual radio IDs.
3c) Type Wildcard is used to search for IDs not already created.
4) Make Scanlists by selecting each TGRP and then checking one of the number boxes in the Details for TGRP object panel.

Given the problems you are having and your evident confusion, you might need to just toss out whatever programming you have already done and start over with these instructions.

If you are downloading systems from RRDB (which I have never tried with Win500), then check each of the Win500 Object tabs to see how they are laid out. Try scanning them without changing anything until you get a feel for how it all hangs together.

EDIT: An object may be included into more than one Scanlist at a time, which eliminates the need to create multiple instances of the same objects.
 

KevinC

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I merged the two threads discussing this issue,
 
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