Batboard

HI,
New member to the forums, been using the site as a newbie reference to MTS 2000 radio information, Can anyone point me or supply me with a simple diagram of the parts needed to enable trunking. As a newbie I am not really familiar with some of the proper terms, I have saw say a Motorola w9 control head, what does this connect to ?, Maybe something along the lines of
Control head, I assume this is the brains of the operation ?
Cable to the radio or whatever it is
Radio or amplifier or both, is the radio a normal 2 way radio
Does it go to a computer or is it computer controlled
are the radios just programmed via the makers software
Telling it rx and tx frequency and group what radio is in what group ?
There was mention of Trunking keys and system Keys
Do you get these with your radio license or from the control head ?
If my reading is correct is this an accurate statement ?
you get a control head which connects to a 2 way radio, the black thing with fins you see in picutes ? connects via a cable
you progam the radio with all the TX and RX data
progam your hand helds
And that is it, very over somplified I know,
Why are contorl heads seperate ? is this for mounting or easily changed,
Does the control head have to be paired with the Radio, black box thing, VHF, UHF
Once all connected, control head, Radio, black finned box and thn to Antenna ?
Any assistance would be appriciated thanks.

A 'control head' is simply where the radio controls such as volume, channel changing, display, etc...exist. It can be directly attached to the radio, or be self-contained and connected to the rest of the radio through a cable. 'Control heads' have nothing to do with trunking.

To save me a lot of typing, I'm going to refer you to a couple of tutorials which should help you understand a lot more about trunking in general:

http://wiki.radioreference.com/index.ph ... ing_Basics

http://www.uniden.com/products/ButIjust ... Police.pdf

Once you've read through those, then you can start to think about the hardware involved & we'll do our best to help you along.

Todd

Hi
Excellent will read through them tonight and will take me a few days to digest, some great links with freq examples also, have a great night.
David

Hi
And finally got the thinking behind trunked systems and repeaters, so thank you Todd and I am ready to post my next question, and the links were fantastic for newbie questions and future reference, have a great day.
David

HI
I followed up on another question on what are system Keys, and from my reading these are small files which allows different radios to do different things and to help say prevent unauthorized accessed to some systems, (information about frequency and system), these files I can only see refer to system Admin, where does HE get the key from ?, The system designer ?, Thanks

dss261263 wrote:HI
I followed up on another question on what are system Keys, and from my reading these are small files which allows different radios to do different things and to help say prevent unauthorized accessed to some systems, (information about frequency and system), these files I can only see refer to system Admin, where does HE get the key from ?, The system designer ?, Thanks

As a first line of security, Motorola made it so each trunking system they manufactured had a unique 4-digit system ID. Each system also had a 'system key' on a floppy disk, which is a small computer file unique to that system ID. The radio programming software needs to be pointed to this system key file (wherever you put it on your hard drive) before it allows you to add/edit trunking information for that system ID. If you wanted to have information for say 4 neighboring trunking systems in your radio, you'd need all 4 system keys to do so.

The customer/department/municipality/whoever purchased the system would've received the system key with the system...we refer to whoever the customer has put in charge of programming radios, and thus controlling access to their system, generically as 'the system admin'. It could be a department within themselves, or a local radio shop, or a state agency, or whoever.

Beware the reliance on "system administrators" here on batboards. They are looked up to like some omnipotent gatekeeper that can do magical things. Sometimes it's just a guy in the radio shop that was around when the guy that retired a few years ago taught him to do it. Many system administrators have no idea how the trunking system works and just say "call Motorola" when it's broken. Some know more about their systems than Motorola does.

Thanks Wavetar & Escomm for the prompt replies.
And I am amused to see some things never change with folks getting moved within company departments, excellent information, I have saw so many references to system keys and trunking keys etc and the like, the question I asked myself was why ?. and basically why purchase certain features on radios when i will never ever use these. thanks again chaps and have a great day, David