MARITIMES SCANNING SITE

FAQ #4

Question: “What are the frequencies for the XXXXXXXX?” where XXXXXX is an agency that uses the TMR (NS Trunked Mobile Radio System.

Answer: This type of question will be met by a question back to the questioner! The difficulty in attempting to answer this sort of question lies in me not knowing if the questioner knows anything about trunking or that the service they are asking about is trunked. In giving a complete answer, i.e. one for a person who doesn’t know about trunking, is a very long one and therefore I always need to first ask the person if they are in the first place knowledgeable about trunking in general, and then in particular are they familiar with the NS TMR. For example if someone asks about listening to a service in the Halifax area that is on the trunk it is necessary to know that there are several different sites or towers in the area that will carry the desired services and each one of these has a different set of frequencies. It is necessary to know which of these sites will be monitored and then provide the frequencies for these sites. The Halifax area sites are: Geizers Hill, Mariitime Centre (downtown), Preston, Sackville, Tantallon and also nearby ones at Prospect and Musquodoboit Harbour, plus many many more farther away. Then in addition it is necessary to know the talk group id’s for the desired services. Talk group id’s are NOT frequencies yet some will refer to them as such as they may not be fully familiar with trunking, and when I receive a request for frequencies quite often the person really wants talk group id’s but I wouldn’t know that.

In addition there are other questions and pieces of information that come out of the basic one, in this case the question of whether or not the service wanted is analog, digital or encrypted. Without going into detail the best summary answer is to say that practically all RCMP and Halifax Regional Police communications are digital and therefore require a digital scanner. Occasionally these services can be heard in analog on liaison channels but on the other hand some of their channels are encrypted and cannot be heard on present day scanners. Many federal government communications as well as those of the NS Dept of Natural Resources game wardens are generally encrypted. Other than that most services on the trunk are analog.