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Motorola Type II

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Motorola Type II systems refer to the the second generation Motorola Trunking systems that replaced Fleets and Subfleets with the concept of talkgroups and individual radio IDs. There are no dependencies on Fleetmaps, therefore there are no limitations to how many radio ids that can participate on a talkgroup. This allows for greater flexibility for the agency.


Type II Smartnet systems uses status bits for special transmissions such as Emergency, Patches, DES/DVP scrambled transmissions, and Multiselects on Motorola Trunking systems. Motorola Trunking radios directly interpret them for their special functions, thus no difference is noticed by the person with the radio. The Trunktracker scanners however interpret these special talkgroup status bits as different talkgroups entirely. Below is the conversion chart for these special status bits.

Dec ID + # 	Usage
-------------------------------------------------------
ID+0 	        Normal Talkgroup
ID+1 	        All Talkgroup
ID+2 	        Emergency
ID+3 	        talkgroup patch to another
ID+4 	        Emergency Patch
ID+5 	        Emergency multi-group
ID+6 	        Not assigned
ID+7 	        Multi-select (initiated by dispatcher)
ID+8 	        DES Encryption talkgroup
ID+9 	        DES All Talkgroup
ID+10 	        DES Emergency
ID+11 	        DES Talkgroup patch
ID+12 	        DES Emergency Patch
ID+13 	        DES Emergency multi-group
ID+14 	        Not assigned
ID+15 	        Multi-select DES TG

Therefore, if a user was transmitting a multi-select call on talkgroup 1808, the trunktracker would actually receive those transmissions on 1815. Some common uses of these status bits are as follows:

  • When a user hits their emergency button, all conversations on the talkgroup revert to the Emergency status talkgroup (ID+2) until the dispatch clears the emergency status. Therefore, if someone hit their emergency button and their radio was on talkgroup 16, all communications would switch to talkgroup 18.
  • A lot of Fire and EMS departments dispatch tone-outs and alarms as Multi-select communications (ID+7). Therefore, if your fire department dispatch talkgroup is 1616, and they do dispatch tone-outs and alarms as Multi-selects, then those communications will be on talkgroup 1623.

This can be a problem, because you will miss communications if you don't have those talkgroups programmed. By setting the Type II block you are monitoring with a fleetmap of S-1 (Mot Size A), you'll essentially get Type I subfleets for each Type II talkgroup - encompassing all of the status bits into one subfleet.