Fire Tone Out Code Question

[joetnymedic]

I left my 396XT in Tone Out search mode last night and got the following

1. Plectron Tone of 1820.0 (which was matched on the tone chart)
2. Plectron Tone of 1287.0 (also correct)
3. Quick Call of 539.0 (this was both the A; and B: Tones
4. A- Tone of 1049.9 , B-Tone of 672.4 (nothing close so obviously off by a bit)
5. A-Tone 800.5, B-Tone 750.3
6. A-Tone 2692.7 B-Tone 1464.5
7. A-Tone 1698.0 B-tone 1693.6

I compared these to a list of known fire pager and Plectron tones out there but am having an issue matching them up to the actual tones. These are obviously different departments on different freqs, but I want to be able to park the radio at sleep time and only get woke up if there were an actual fire, etc, not listening to everything in between. I have the freqs for each tone if needed to match.

Thanks,
Joe

[Rt169Radio]

Are you trying to get a certain fire department tone? Or trying to get the tone out to stay on one tone?

[joetnymedic]

those are a couple of departments. so i was doing the tones for each and was planning on setting up the radio so i can just park it on X dept to monitor overnight. just like a pager. no biggie

[Chauffeur6]

539.0 is a Motorola tone
1820.0 and 1287.0 are both Plectron tones

672.4 = 672.0 (Plectron)
750.3 = 749.0 (Federal)
800.5 = 799.0 (Plectron)
1049.9 = 1047.1 (Motorola)
1464.5 = 1465.0 (Plectron)
1698.0 and 1693.6 = 1695.0 (Federal)
2692.7 = 2688.0 (Plectron)

[PJH]

To confuse it some more, some consoles will not do or are not programmed on the old set of tones thever everyone is familar with. However, most pagers (including the Minitor 5's) will still decode the tones even if they are not "on spec".

I ran into this problem with an Orbacomm console that sounded the Hz to whole numbers or half's - so so 515.3 is 515.0 in the console tone generator. Pagers still worked, but had me scratching my head.

So, it is possible to get some oddballs, but you should be able to match things up closely.

There is some allowed varience on the tone receivers to compensate for radio variable as some older infrastructure (analog MW, leased lines, etc) can change the pitch - thus the tone - a bit by the time it hits the radio.

[joetnymedic]

I knew the plectron and quick call 2 tones but are you saying you can combine plectron and federal tones? also can a pager be tripped by the plectron tone? Like I said, my plan was to put the tones in my 396XT and then say one night when I really only wanted to listen to one particular department, I could just set the radio on that and if they got a decent call then I could get up but if not, I could just sleep in.

[PJH]

You'd be fine as whatever you use isn't too "tight" on spec. Hz is Hz, it just depends if your reciever can decode the range your looking to decode.

On the Minitor pagers, your given a pager wide selection to use the following:
Motorola
Plectron
Fast Plectron
GE
User custom

Depending on what you select, it defaults to a table that was used by the major manfactures for years, so 123 (as far as the pager is concerned) will be changed to 123.3 or 122.9 etc etc.

Worse case, try your settings and see what works.