Trunking (SMR) Research

Revised 06/15/10

The trunking information on these pages was derived by analysis and observation of local trunked radio systems using various trunk-capable scanners and/or software. Motorola® trunking research has been aided by the MTrunker 3.8.3 program. EDACS™ trunking information was developed using ETrunker 3.8.3. Various LTR formats are being analyzed with LTrunker 3.8.4 beta ec4.

My scanning/trunktracking station is now almost exclusively composed of Digital TrunkTrackerIV™ receivers. I also use PRO96COM to analyze P25 systems.

I have MPT-1327 beta test software (TrunkSniffer, UniTrunker, and TrunkView), but I have not found any systems within range.

Talkgroup information for various system types are shown as follows:

M/A-Com/ComNet/Ericsson EDACS - AFS and Decimal Talkgroup
M/A-Com/ComNet/Ericsson EDACS-SCAT - AFS and Decimal Talkgroup
EFJ/Transcrypt ESAS - none found yet (obsolete, but still in use)
EFJ/Transcrypt LTR-Regular - Area/Home/ID#
EFJ/Transcrypt LTR-MultiNet - System/Group and Hex Talkgroup
EFJ/Transcypt LTR-Passport - format not yet known
Motorola Type I - Fleet/Subfleet (obsolete, but still in use)
Motorola Type IIi - Decimal Talkgroup (fleetmap required)
Motorola Type II - Decimal Talkgroup
Motorola Hybrid - Fleet/Subfleet or Decimal Talkgroup as appropriate in each Block
MPT-1327 - none found yet
P25 - (indicates a "pure" APCO Project 25-compliant system)

EDACS systems can contain "blank" LCNs. When you see a frequency entered as "000.0000" in the listings, it represents a blank channel. When you see a question mark, it means the frequency is unknown.

LTR systems, like EDACS, must be entered into the new Uniden trunktrackers (and the Radio Shack PRO-97, PRO-2051, and PRO-2055 and the new GRE PSR series) in correct channel order. This channel ordering can be extremely difficult to determine on UHF systems. All users on a UHF LTR can be found to have the same Home channel, so the assigned channel numbers for other repeaters cannot be identified because they are never displayed. Also, many systems are numbered in increments of 4 channels. For example, a system might have its four repeaters designated as channels 1, 5, 9, and 13, or the numbering might not even start at Channel 1.

Be careful when programming EDACS and LTR-Regular systems! Many scanner models' channel banks start at zero. Trunking LCNs start at one.

Information on some systems is still incomplete. If you can help, please either send email to feedback@nf2g.com or use the Feedback form.

Trunktracker™ Scanner Series'

The word "Trunktracker" is trademarked by Uniden, the company that marketed the first scanners that were able to follow trunked radio systems. Like movies, later generations of trunk tracking scanners with additional features were designated with a Roman numeral suffix, as follows:

Trunktracker (I): Motorola
TrunktrackerII: Motorola + EDACS
TrunktrackerIII: Motorola + EDACS + LTR-Regular
TrunktrackerIV: Motorola + EDACS + LTR-Regular + P25 Digital
TrunktrackerV: The new DMA and object-oriented scanners?

TrunktrackerII and later scanners also feature "Dual-Trunking" and "Multi-System Trunking" (these might also be trademarks - if I find out that they are, then I will mark them appropriately here), which include the ability to track more than one trunked system, along with conventional scanning, at the same time.

Revision Dates
EDACS 06/01/10	LTR 06/15/10	Motorola 01/10/10	MPT-1327 02/13/10	P25 06/01/10	Unknown 04/04/08