A Warning About Trunk Systems

What You Need To Know

• runk system has a couple of different components that make it work.
• We need a transmitter or tower to receive or tune to.
• We need a control channel that tells the scanner what talk groups are active
• Our scanner will move to voice channels when talk groups are active.
• Talk groups are segments of users or departments on a trunked system.
• Trunk systems can have multiple sites. Trunk systems can be large, they can be small. They can be multi-level, multi county, multi state, single state. They can be small systems ranging inside of a building to ranging across thousands of miles, but they all start with a single site.
• A “site” in Radio Reference and a “site” on paper are not the same as a transmitter site. It can be, but it shouldn’t be thought of that way.
• We can also have sites and layers set up based on who uses them.
• To program our scanners correctly, we need to know if talk groups are segmented on specific layers (aka sites) or if they are shared across multiple sites
• Talk groups only appear on sites if there are users affiliated on those sites. This helps manage spectrum and only required talk groups are using valuable RF resources.
• Don’t expect a user that’s 100 miles away from you to be on the site you are listening to if the selected layer doesn’t cover where they are.
• It’s very important to understand where the talk groups are showing up on these systems.

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