Fire Tones

[muhockey86]

Ok so I've got the bearcat 996t and I want to set up the fire tone out. Correct me if I'm wrong, does this feature basically turn my scanner into something similar to a Motorola Minitor? I'm not too clear as to what exactly the fire tone out is useful for. What's the best way to get these tones?

[NeFire242]

Originally Posted by muhockey86

Ok so I've got the bearcat 996t and I want to set up the fire tone out. Correct me if I'm wrong, does this feature basically turn my scanner into something similar to a Motorola Minitor? I'm not too clear as to what exactly the fire tone out is useful for.

Correct. It would be useful to say you wish to be alerted to a fire or rescue call, but not hear all of the other traffic on the channel if they're paged on the same freq as they talk. Of course if you're department is paged on VHF, and they use UHF to talk back to dispatch, etc. I suppose this feature wouldn't really be necessary, unless you had tones for a specific station etc.

Originally Posted by muhockey86

What's the best way to get these tones?

Ask a firefighter to look at his pager or if someone at the station knows. Some places keep it a big secret, even thought it goes out right over air and you could record it and once you've grabbed it take it through a freq counter and get the tones that way.

[ka3jjz]

Another way to get these tones, assuming they aren't in the database (don't know what county Arnold is in), is to use a separate scanner (anything that would receive the tone out freq well will do just fine) and some software. Some packages are free. There are a few such packages listed at the bottom of the wiki article on FTOs, the link for which follows...

Fire Tone Out - The RadioReference Wiki

73 Mike