How to tell if a radio affiliates with a trunked system?

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Richard Collier
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How to tell if a radio affiliates with a trunked system?

Post by Richard Collier »

Just say one does program a radio on a trunked system, How do you know if the radio affiliates with said system. Is there a way to tell other than your radio being turned into a brick. Does the radio show a display beeps,flashing leds??? I am just asking and please do not read anything into this. Just a tech question.
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Bill_G
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Re: How to tell if a radio affiliates with a trunked system?

Post by Bill_G »

You'll see the xmit light flash as it attempts to transmit. If it flashes quickly several times one time, and then not again for a very long time, it succeeded in affiliating. If it keeps flashing, then it is not successful, and may display an out of range message. OTOH, if it never flashes, then someone programmed it for non-affiliation which is what unauthorized users should be set to.
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MTS2000des
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Re: How to tell if a radio affiliates with a trunked system?

Post by MTS2000des »

the radio usually will attempt to register when first powered up after it seeks a control channel (if programmed for the first time) or will go to the last control channel it was on when powered off. Once it decodes the system ID and WACN and verifies they match, then it transmits an affiliation request along with it's stored individual ID to the controller over the CC.

Usually you will see the red TX LED flash once or twice when this happens, the radio once affiliation is complete will then be given it's WUID and will either be allowed to receive traffic on that talkgroup or not (all depends on how the radio's ID is setup in the Provisioning Manager). If a radio is set to passively inhibit, it would occur at the moment the radio attempts to affiliate.

Whenever you change talkgroups, go in/out of scan, or the radio re-scans control channels. it will send data to the controller again. In an Astro 25 environment, if the ID is invalid you will usually get a SYS REG REFUSED message on the subscriber radio if the affiliation was not successful if no radio profile exists and the DEFAULT profile is disabled. Your radio will not receive any traffic at that point.
The views here are my own and do not represent those of anyone else or the company, the boss, his wife, his dog or distant relatives.
Richard Collier
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Joined: Wed Jan 30, 2002 4:00 pm

Re: How to tell if a radio affiliates with a trunked system?

Post by Richard Collier »

Interesting on how this stuff works. It seems like the radio will transmit anyway but for a short time just to find the system. I thank both of you for the time to answer my question. Kinda cool has this stuff works.
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MTS2000des
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What radios do you own?: XTS2500, XTS5000, and MTS2000

Re: How to tell if a radio affiliates with a trunked system?

Post by MTS2000des »

having just taken system administrator workshop class, it is VERY interesting to understand how it all comes together. The long and the short of it is the system is very powerful and also keeps detailed records of everything every radio registered on it does. The records are VERY detailed, it is almost mind blowing how much data is generated for each and every radio every day!
The views here are my own and do not represent those of anyone else or the company, the boss, his wife, his dog or distant relatives.
Richard Collier
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Re: How to tell if a radio affiliates with a trunked system?

Post by Richard Collier »

I would assume that would include a so called ghost radio which would be one that only receives?
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Bill_G
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Re: How to tell if a radio affiliates with a trunked system?

Post by Bill_G »

System logs work off received data.
Richard Collier
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Re: How to tell if a radio affiliates with a trunked system?

Post by Richard Collier »

Then I would guess the users habbits and location even if use as a scanner.

MTS2000des wrote:having just taken system administrator workshop class, it is VERY interesting to understand how it all comes together. The long and the short of it is the system is very powerful and also keeps detailed records of everything every radio registered on it does. The records are VERY detailed, it is almost mind blowing how much data is generated for each and every radio every day!
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Bill_G
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Re: How to tell if a radio affiliates with a trunked system?

Post by Bill_G »

No. If it doesn't transmit, there is nothing to log on the system end.
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N4DES
was KS4VT
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What radios do you own?: APX,XTS2500,XTL2500,XTL1500

Re: How to tell if a radio affiliates with a trunked system?

Post by N4DES »

MTS2000des wrote:having just taken system administrator workshop class, it is VERY interesting to understand how it all comes together. The long and the short of it is the system is very powerful and also keeps detailed records of everything every radio registered on it does. The records are VERY detailed, it is almost mind blowing how much data is generated for each and every radio every day!
And even more so if you are capturing the ATIA data stream using the Genesis products. They have outstanding reporting and the RAID server I use is big enough for me to hold a good 2+ years worth of data. Seeing illegal affiliations is a piece of cake and inhibiting rogue users when they least expect it is a regular past time for me.
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MTS2000des
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What radios do you own?: XTS2500, XTS5000, and MTS2000

Re: How to tell if a radio affiliates with a trunked system?

Post by MTS2000des »

We purchased GenWatch 3 and the Clone Watch module. Problem is we are a single zone system but have 15 RF subsites across a large area (simulcast). If there was some way for GW3 to be able to poll the output of the GCM8000 and "know" what particular subsite a user is coming in on...training is upcoming, can't wait for that.
The views here are my own and do not represent those of anyone else or the company, the boss, his wife, his dog or distant relatives.
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N4DES
was KS4VT
Posts: 1233
Joined: Thu Dec 25, 2003 7:59 am
What radios do you own?: APX,XTS2500,XTL2500,XTL1500

Re: How to tell if a radio affiliates with a trunked system?

Post by N4DES »

MTS2000des wrote:We purchased GenWatch 3 and the Clone Watch module. Problem is we are a single zone system but have 15 RF subsites across a large area (simulcast). If there was some way for GW3 to be able to poll the output of the GCM8000 and "know" what particular subsite a user is coming in on...training is upcoming, can't wait for that.
Not going to give away all my secrets due to not knowing who else might be reading, but one of the things I do is to look at the individual record in the radio reject report and it tells you what site the user attempted to affiliate to.
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