40
An EDACS
®
Trunked system
This chart shows how talkgroups are organized within an
EDACS system at the Agency level. The individual
talkgroups cannot be shown at this scale because there
are over 2000. However the chart can show the 16
Agencies in this example. The system is logical and easy
to understand. EDACS systems are typically arranged in
an outline structure.
The system users are given blocks of talkgroups. Sizes
vary but most large cities and other agencies have blocks
of 128 channels. Smaller cities have only 64 or 32
channels.
In this example, the County Sheriff is agency 01. The city
of Sullivan is Agency 03. Adams Hill and Matthew Junction
share Agency 08.
Your scanner shows EDACS talkgroups in AFS (Agency-
Fleet-Subfleet) format. This helps you see, at a glance,
who you are monitoring. And with the partial-entry feature
you can easily include nearby, related channels in the
same Fleet or Agency. You can just as easily exclude
entire unwanted Fleets and Agencies.
When in Search mode, with the system frequencies
programmed, and your scanner locked to the control
channel, you can select a desired city by keying in the
Agency part of the AFS talkgroup. For example, in Hold
mode you can select the entire city of Sullivan with 4 key
presses
0, 3,
(decimal key),
SRCH key.
When you hear an interesting talkgroup, in Hold mode
capture it to your Scan List by pressing
E during the
transmission.
Or hold on it by pressing
HOLD/RESUME.
If you want to monitor the Sullivan Police Dispatch channel
(which is talk group 03-062), press
0, 3, (decimal key), 0, 6, 2, the ▼ key. Your scanner
can also work in decimal format.
Talkgroup 03-62 in decimal format is 402. But decimal format does not give you any information
about the system hierarchy.
For example Sullivan, in decimal, uses channels from 384 to 511. This is not as easy to
remember as Agency 03. But decimal is useful if you need to work from decimal talkgroup lists.
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