Newbie question - inexpensive scanner for North San Diego

[N6ATF]

So north cell has Chula Vista and La Mesa PD covered? Never bothered to look.

[LokalYokal]

Really neat to be listening in to Escondido dispatch.

Thanks for getting that running, again, that's really neat. This has given me a taste of scanning without the expense!

[N6ATF]

I was just listening to an undercover operation on my analog-only scanner. Unfortunately I caught it at the tail end...

No digital-analog patching seemed to be in use judging from the sound quality of the participants, but it was on the RCS and there are enough analog LE talkgroups to hear interesting stuff every once in a while.

[LokalYokal]

What does this mean?

XMIT ID: 034003 08650000
Unknown Trunk ID

[N6ATF]

034003 is the talkgroup (knock off the leading 0)
8650000 the frequency that talkgroup was assigned by trunking control (put a decimal after the first 3 numbers and a MHz at the end)
unknown trunk ID means the scanner owner hasn't put in an alpha tag to identify who uses it yet.

[SkipSanders]

XMIT ID: 034003 08650000
Unknown Trunk ID
--------
It means that, as I mentioned above, he has the scanner set wrong, so it's adding what are called 'status bits' to the ID codes.

34003 is not a 'valid' Talkgroup for Motorola, all 'valid' base talkgroups are divisible by 16.

In this case, the REAL Talkgroup is 34000. The '3' added to it indicates that it's patched by the dispatcher to some other talk group at the moment.

34000 is San Diego Sheriff's Encinitas Dispatch Talkgroup

He probably has that group programmed in, but the scanner software he's using isn't recognizing it because of the status bit added '3'.

As I understand it, that scanner is scanning in 'open' mode, which means it will recieve any talkgroup, UNLESS that talkgroup is programmed in, AND locked out.

[LokalYokal]

Ah, thanks much!