ASTRO Trunking Questions

[Caffiene]

I hope this post won't get too long-winded, but here goes. I have some trunking questions and they mostly have to do with ASTRO trunking. That's why I'm putting them here rather than in the general forum.

Let's start with an example system in Example City. Let's say Example City has a Smartzone system with 4 zones: North, East, South, and West.
First, what is a Dynamic Regrouping talkgroup used for?
I think the answer is it's used in a Smartzone system in case Officer Smith from North zone walks over to South zone. His talkgroup ("talkgroups" if in scan) will follow him into the new zone "through" the Dynamic Regroup talkgroup.
But that seems in-effiecent. Why not just extend the North talkgroup to the South zone for Officer Smith?

Now, let's say you're the Chief of Police and you want to monitor all of the city's radio traffic on your handheld. You are in North zone and you have North Dispatch, East Dispatch, West Dispatch, South Dispatch, and for giggles, the associated Tac 1 and Tac 2 talkgroups. That would be ((dispatch + tac 1 + tac 2) * 4 zones) 12 talkgroups in scan on your radio.
Does dynamic re-grouping come into play here? Does the Zone Controller just start sending the East, South and West traffic in the North zone? If so, couldn't that "busy out" the system since there is now 3 times more traffic in the North zone?

I tried looking up these answers through the links on different boards, but all seem to offer basic trunking information.
Thanks in advance,
-Caff

[xmo]

The Dynamic Regrouping talkgroup exists in the radio so it can be dynamically regrouped. (Seems obvious, but the point is that if it isn't in there the radio can't be regrouped)

Dynamic Regrouping is a function initiated by the system manager from a 'terminal' (like SIMS or ZM). The system administrator can replace that 'dynamic regroup group' with some other talkgroup on a temporary basis. The command can be sent to one radio or as many as required.

Dynamic Regrouping is actually a Smartnet feature (which is therefore intrinsically part of the Smartzone feature set). It has nothing to do with zones or scanning.

This capability is sometimes used in storm plans so that radios which are responding to an incident can all talk to each other.

Another use is to put a regroup-group in SWAT team radios. If there is a hostage situation and the bad-guy gets hold of a cop radio, he can hear all the related system activity. Of course, you can just inhibit the radio but the other option is to regroup the radio to a 'NEGOTIATION' talkgroup. You also send the selector lock command so the radio can't be changed off that talkgroup. That way other comms can't be monitored and you can talk to the bad-guy.

[Twisted_Pear]

Caffiene, browse over to my website. It should put you on the right path. I go from basic to beyond; and it's more Motorola related.

http://tricari.home.attbi.com/