Hi Al,

Thanks for all the explanations!

Let's see if I got this right, ok?

First, for Miami-Beach and Miami City I program all the following into
one bank:

854.9625, 855.2125, 855.4625, 855.7125, 859.78750, 859.91250, 860.78750
and 860.91250.

and I tag each of them as "MO" for Motorola Trunking.

I ignore all the alternate control channels listed as "blue" on the
webpages you listed, right? (but then why would that be?! would I not
need them also?)

Since I want to listen to everything that is going on, I do not enter
and talkgroups IDs.

Should I want to listen to Miami-Dade *COUNTY* police I program EDACS
into another, separate bank. But which ones?! Are police "LG & Fire"
or "Public Safety"?

Also, say something big happens, how do Miami-City, Miami-Beach and
Miami-Dade County cops talk to each other?!

Any further pointers would really be appreciated!

Thanks,

VS

PS: I do not think that the hotel frequencies were trunked, but since I
was running only the Singnal Stalker mode I suppose I might not have
noticed. My impression was that there was no distinction made between
any talkgroups, pretty much everything was happening everywhere.

I would suggest you put the Miami Beach and City of Miami control
channel freqs in two separate banks. If they are in the same bank, the
scanner will monitor one or the other system, but not both. If they are
in separate banks the scanner will monitor one for a while, then the
other for a while, and if entered and turned on, Dade County for a while.

I suspect these systems are so busy you will be overwhelmed with calls,
and will find it difficult to sort them all out. You may wish to
'close' the banks and monitor only a few of the key talkgroups.

wrote:
Hi Al,

Thanks for all the explanations!

Let's see if I got this right, ok?

First, for Miami-Beach and Miami City I program all the following into
one bank:

854.9625, 855.2125, 855.4625, 855.7125, 859.78750, 859.91250, 860.78750
and 860.91250.

and I tag each of them as "MO" for Motorola Trunking.

I ignore all the alternate control channels listed as "blue" on the
webpages you listed, right? (but then why would that be?! would I not
need them also?)

Since I want to listen to everything that is going on, I do not enter
and talkgroups IDs.

Should I want to listen to Miami-Dade *COUNTY* police I program EDACS
into another, separate bank. But which ones?! Are police "LG & Fire"
or "Public Safety"?

Also, say something big happens, how do Miami-City, Miami-Beach and
Miami-Dade County cops talk to each other?!

Any further pointers would really be appreciated!

Thanks,

VS

PS: I do not think that the hotel frequencies were trunked, but since I
was running only the Singnal Stalker mode I suppose I might not have
noticed. My impression was that there was no distinction made between
any talkgroups, pretty much everything was happening everywhere.

On Tue, 21 Feb 2006 15:21:36 -0500, wbertram wrote:

I would suggest you put the Miami Beach and City of Miami control
channel freqs in two separate banks. If they are in the same bank, the
scanner will monitor one or the other system, but not both.

That depends. With GRE scanners and Motorola systems, you can program
more than 1 system in a bank, as long as there's at least one
not-locked-out conventional channel between control channel groups.

Al Klein wrote:

That depends. With GRE scanners and Motorola systems, you can program
more than 1 system in a bank, as long as there's at least one
not-locked-out conventional channel between control channel groups.

Really? So I could stack two Motorola trunked systems in one bank on a
PRO-95 as long as I stuck a "divider" conventional channel between them?
That's intriguing. Too tired to play with it right now, but I may
have to give that a go tomorrow night.
--
Bo Williams -
http://hiwaay.net/~williams/

On Tue, 21 Feb 2006 22:38:35 -0600, Bo Williams
wrote:

Al Klein wrote:

That depends. With GRE scanners and Motorola systems, you can program
more than 1 system in a bank, as long as there's at least one
not-locked-out conventional channel between control channel groups.

Really? So I could stack two Motorola trunked systems in one bank on a
PRO-95 as long as I stuck a "divider" conventional channel between them?

People do it all the time, and it works.

On 21 Feb 2006 05:09:38 -0800, wrote:

First, for Miami-Beach and Miami City I program all the following into
one bank:

854.9625, 855.2125, 855.4625, 855.7125, 859.78750, 859.91250, 860.78750
and 860.91250.

and I tag each of them as "MO" for Motorola Trunking.

Set the mode for the bank as MO and the mode for each channel as MO.

Program 854.9625, 855.2125, 855.4625 and 855.7125 for the City, then
any conventional frequency (it doesn't have to be in use, but it can't
be locked out - 146.55 will work, if no hams are using it) then
859.7875, 859.9125, 860.7875 and 860.9125 for Miami Beach - assuming
you have a Radio Shack scanner.

I ignore all the alternate control channels listed as "blue" on the
webpages you listed, right?

Good idea, since there are none for either of those systems. (Black
is not blue.)

Since I want to listen to everything that is going on, I do not enter
and talkgroups IDs.

Should I want to listen to Miami-Dade *COUNTY* police I program EDACS
into another, separate bank. But which ones?! Are police "LG & Fire"
or "Public Safety"?

In the Dade County system, police talkgroups are listed in the Police
group - TGs 512-737.

Also, say something big happens, how do Miami-City, Miami-Beach and
Miami-Dade County cops talk to each other?!

Dade County, with their EDACS radios, can't talk to the others on
their Motorola radios. Miami and Miami Beach, being on different
systems, can't use those radios to talk to each other either. They
either have some interop system (a second radio) or the dispatchers
use the phones a lot. (They probably have direct lines to the other
agencies.)

I ignore all the alternate control channels listed as "blue" on the
webpages you listed, right?

Good idea, since there are none for either of those systems. (Black
is not blue.)

I might be obtuse (in fact - I know I am), but I don't get it. What
are black, red and blue frequencies listed by radioreference.com
(http://www.radioreference.com/module...=TRSDB&sid=206 ,
http://www.radioreference.com/module...=TRSDB&sid=207 )

Which ones do I need to enter into my scanner to listen to all the
police frequencies?

Thanks,

On 22 Feb 2006 13:12:31 -0800, wrote:

I ignore all the alternate control channels listed as "blue" on the
webpages you listed, right?

Good idea, since there are none for either of those systems. (Black
is not blue.)

I might be obtuse (in fact - I know I am), but I don't get it. What
are black, red and blue frequencies listed by radioreference.com
(http://www.radioreference.com/module...=TRSDB&sid=206 ,
http://www.radioreference.com/module...=TRSDB&sid=207 )

Look at http://www.radioreference.com/modules.php?name=TRSDB&sid=722
and you'll see the difference between a blue frequency (866.36250, for
example) and the black ones on the links you posted.

Which ones do I need to enter into my scanner to listen to all the
police frequencies?

Red and blue, not black. (The red and blue ones have asterisks after
them, the black ones don't. The asterisk means control channel.)

ok. let me re-phrase my question.

If one want to listen to Motorola trunked frequencies, what should
he/she understand about the difference between primary control
channels, alternate control channels and the rest of the channels
(i.e., "black" channels on radioreference.com)? Why should he/she
enter some of them in his/her banks but others not? What do these
channels do for trunking? What is their function/use?

(please keep in mind that I am *very* obtuse and even the obvious (to
others) needs to be explained (to me)).

On 22 Feb 2006 20:15:17 -0800, wrote:

ok. let me re-phrase my question.

If one want to listen to Motorola trunked frequencies, what should
he/she understand about the difference between primary control
channels, alternate control channels and the rest of the channels
(i.e., "black" channels on radioreference.com)? Why should he/she
enter some of them in his/her banks but others not? What do these
channels do for trunking? What is their function/use?

Ok. The system may use any of the primary or secondary control
frequencies at any time. Some switch on a regular basis - hourly,
daily - others use all but one primary as voice frequencies, and
switch one of them to control duty when the normal control transmitter
has a problem.

Now that you understand control frequencies:

You can program all the frequencies - red, blue and black - into your
scanner. Different scanners do things differently, but if you're not
in a "control channel only" mode, if a voice channel gets added, you
have to add it or you miss calls. In control channel only mode, you
only have to program the red and blue frequencies. (Programming the
black ones just wastes scanner memory.) The scanner looks for the
voice channel number on the control frequency, then looks up the
frequency in an internal table and goes to it. If a voice channel is
added the scanner still goes to it, without your having to do
anything.

It's also a lot easier to program 4 control channels than loads of
voice channels.