Smart-Trunk is/was in Southern California... their radio trunking format is different from all the other choices. But the format worked OK, was very low cost to buy the hardware and some radio mfgrs provided the format capacity in their lower cost radios... Kenwood being one.
It was a very smart move and a decent choice if you knew what you were doing. But I was told the owner of the Smart-Trunk Format had a war with the Company (I'm sure it was probably over money) and reported to refus to allow the Company to continue to sell it, meaning the death knell for the format... sad. You might find someone who has the firmware for some of the Kenwood and Icom Portables and start a low cost trunking system. I picked a few controllers up off of Ebay last year (for almost nothing) with hopes of playing with them and the format... but haven't gotten anywhere with it yet. Doug posted a follow up with the manual url. The controllers will not work with CTCSS or DCS radio formats. cheers, skipp skipp025 at yahoo.om > "bbfmrf" <bbf...@...> wrote: > > I have (3) ST-853 SmarTrunk II Digital Controllers. > > I cannot seem to find any info on these models. > > Can anyone supply info on these controllers? > > For example, are they capable of PL and DPL or any other formats? > > How are they programmed etc, etc. >
