Quick Call II questions

[tjplatt2]

Could anyone help me figure out how to set up quick call so it goes off for my fire company's tones? I have a 16 channel ht1000 radio. Currently I have the county dispatch, 12 fire channels and local police.

Our tones apparently get sent out via the county dispatch channel but I keep my radio on scan mode so I can hear all other traffic.

What would be the best set up so that I can get the county dispatch with quick call but also hear all other radio traffic?

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[riveter]

Do you want it to only unmute county dispatch when your station's tones go out, or do you want it to remain unmuted all the time and just sound an alert for your station's tones?

 

[tjplatt2]

Do you want it to only unmute county dispatch when your station's tones go out, or do you want it to remain unmuted all the time and just sound an alert for your station's tones?

Unmuted the entire time and just sound an alert

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[a417]

most radios (especially the HT series) do not decode reliably when attempting to alert via QC/QCII while on scan. You need to decide if hearing everything on every channel (ha) is more important than the cat in the tree that gets toned out on your fire dispatch channel.

If you park the radio on a channel that is set to unmute "AND" (which will give you carrier squelch - and tone decoding), then you will get all voice traffic and alerting if your agencies tone alerting system is hit. If you attempt to scan, the radio may miss enough of the tones (replace may with WILL) to prevent the radio from meeting alerting requirements.

If this is your agencies primary issue piece of alerting equipment, I am sure they would have some say, and I would NEVER program a radio in this capacity to function w/ scan, because while you're listening to a neighboring dept going to a call on channel 7, you may be missing a dispatch on your own system. I would stick with the minitor you were probably issued.

If this is a personal toy that you spent your own money on, have at it, program it up anyway you like. The busier each channel is in the scan list, the more likely you are to miss the primary alerting channel. I still wouldn't do it.

Keep in mind, you're talking about a 20 year old radio there...I wouldn't expect miracles. The HT1000 series was great in it's heyday, the HT750,1250,1550 not so much. It might be difficult for you to get it programmed, as it requires some antique computer equipment (which some of us keep around for this) to access, and then it would require the specific tone alerting system schema that your county uses. It may be a 10 minute job for some, or a two week ordeal for those who went to Google Univ.

 

[tjplatt2]

most radios (especially the HT series) do not decode reliably when attempting to alert via QC/QCII while on scan. You need to decide if hearing everything on every channel (ha) is more important than the cat in the tree that gets toned out on your fire dispatch channel.

If you park the radio on a channel that is set to unmute "AND" (which will give you carrier squelch - and tone decoding), then you will get all voice traffic and alerting if your agencies tone alerting system is hit. If you attempt to scan, the radio may miss enough of the tones (replace may with WILL) to prevent the radio from meeting alerting requirements.

If this is your agencies primary issue piece of alerting equipment, I am sure they would have some say, and I would NEVER program a radio in this capacity to function w/ scan, because while you're listening to a neighboring dept going to a call on channel 7, you may be missing a dispatch on your own system. I would stick with the minitor you were probably issued.

If this is a personal toy that you spent your own money on, have at it, program it up anyway you like. The busier each channel is in the scan list, the more likely you are to miss the primary alerting channel. I still wouldn't do it.

Keep in mind, you're talking about a 20 year old radio there...I wouldn't expect miracles. The HT1000 series was great in it's heyday, the HT750,1250,1550 not so much. It might be difficult for you to get it programmed, as it requires some antique computer equipment (which some of us keep around for this) to access, and then it would require the specific tone alerting system schema that your county uses. It may be a 10 minute job for some, or a two week ordeal for those who went to Google Univ.

Its my personal radio that I bought for just messing around. I have all the programming software just testing waters on different things. So you're saying that if the channels selected to scan have minimal radio traffic, there's more of a chance that it will pick up the tones rather than channels with heavy traffic?

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[riveter]

Yes. Your radio won't jump back to the fire channel while listening to another channel in scan just because there are tones or a transmission going on on the fire channel. It doesn't know and doesn't care, because it's not monitoring that channel - it's just listening to the one it's scanning. So consequently, the fewer the scan channels the better (more chance of picking up the initial tone), and the less traffic on other scan channels the better too (more chance of picking up... well... anything.)

QCII does not provide any means of priority scan. Just selcal muting or nice ding-ding-ding alerting when proper tones are decoded.

 

[a417]

So you're saying that if the channels selected to scan have minimal radio traffic, there's more of a chance that it will pick up the tones rather than channels with heavy traffic?

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quite the opposite, any channel with heavy traffic IN THE SCAN LIST will steal time from the all-important channel that is waiting for a lengthy QCII tone out.

We had a fleet of HT750s / 1250s / that did a decent job at decoding, but that was because some "jerk" disabled system scan and editing, and that same jerk put in a "whacker channel" which would scan neighbors and the big city fire channel - but was a RX only selection.

On duty - you had to use the main channel, no scan.
Waiting for a scramble call - you had your choice of a muted, pager like channel that required manual reset of a button push
off duty / casual - feel free to use the whacker channel, but you got no alerting. ( I think I put the priority channel beep on - so you knew when the duty crew was talking - but don't quote me on that )

complaints soon stopped after it became obvious what worked, and what didn't.

...and I've been called way worse than jerk.

 

[buddrousa]

A scanning Radio on a Fire Ground is a very dangerous thing. You miss a mayday or an evacuation call and lives are in danger. The programmer put in the radios what the Department Chief told him to program. An IC or interior FF should never have a radio in scan. Also most 2tone pages look for tone A for 3 seconds then tone B for 3 seconds missing this timing window will not trip the radio.

 

[a417]

to call off the zealots, i hear them coming...this wasn't for a fire agency.

I wholeheartedly agree, fireground channels - simplex, analog, no scan.

"Analog is already interoperable"

 

[tjplatt2]

I'm just using it for scanner purposes. I have all my channels program for receiving only

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[a417]

I'll be honest, an HT1000 is a pretty awful scanner.

YMMV.

 

[SCPD]

Actually it is good if your just scanning 16 channels in analog and have proper muting or not enabled or disabled. Qc2 though is different story as mentioned. As for plain Jane analog scanner of 16 channels and the selector set as primary for regular traffic it is fine. Many say it isn't good as they favor other models or the nasty squelch burst from newer radios mdc. There is a way around that part but most don't have the issue.

 

[a417]

...and as long as you have an antique (or access to it) computer for making even miniscule changes, a moto rib and associated cabling, specialized battery charger for the (now)knockoff(only) battery packs that they run on, a dwindling supply of replacement knobs, antennae, gaskets, logic boards and belt clips that has been declared obsolete by the OEM, no desire to be able to easily change things on the fly, never need to travel outside an area where your need for 16 frequencies doesn't change, don't require splinter channels...

do i have to go on?

if you need 16 analog channels, will never have to change them, and sometimes don't mind being tethered to a charger, or chinese knockoff battery packs - all for 6 hours of listening time...fine, go with an HT1000.

All the above and more can be obtained by getting a Pro 75, as found on ebay - as of this posting for under 20 bucks. And guess what, the Pro is FPP! No computer required.

Sure, if you want to look the part for ... well, whatever...buy as many as you want. If you want cost effective and infinitely more flexibility, buy a scanner. Used, at that.

I'm not trying to be an *******, but c'mon...there are better ways to get what you want, than to throw money at a radio produced before some users on the board were born.

sorry, i've digressed.

 

[firemedic78]

I have to say, after reading this thread(and understand, I am not at all perfect at radio programming), but you can VERY easily scan and NOT miss anything on your main channel....It all depends on the model of the radio, (AN, BN, CN, DN)...The newer generations, DN/DN, all you have to do is go under your radio config menu and set the scan settings to enable priority scan and enable the pri scan channel beep, set the timing of the radio to in seconds(05 and up), to revert back to the priority channel you have selected(there are different settings...Fixed, meaning you set only 1 channel out of the 16 to be the pri channel, user sel, meaning whatever channel the channel selector is on, is the pri channel....If you start out as Ch 1, in my case, is our county fire dispatch channel, that will throw the page out via tone and tell us where the call is and the nature of the call and what tac channel to use....Then, you keep it in scan if you want, I do...I switch to the tac channel that we were advised to do, which let's say tac 2, so I switch to channel 3, channel 2 is tac 1, FD dispatch is ch 1, and while scanning, my pri channel now becomes ch 3, because I have my pri scan settings as user selectable, therefore, I can still scan all 16 channels, or however many you want to have scan(you can change what channels you want scanning in your scan menu), and while scanning all 16 channels, as soon as the radio detects traffic on ch 3, it will beep, letting me know that traffic is being emitted on ch 3(pri channel), and as soon as the traffic is done and the tot (the time it takes from after radio traffic stops, until the time is starts scanning again, it will then start scanning and continue so on...and when we go assignment complete, we will return to ch 1, FD dispatch, including our handheld radios, and once we turn the channel selector knob back to ch 1, that now becomes our pri channel again until the next call....basically, you will not miss anything if you using pri scan with user sel channel setting as your pri channel....now, again, you will have to set the time that the radio looks back at the pri channel for radio traffic while in pri scan mode, which we use 05 sec, which you can actually hear the radio clicking real fast when there is radio traffic on a non pri channel, you will hear it skip real fast, that skipping is the radio reverting back to check the pri channel to see if traffic is being emitted.....I know this looks confusing, but in reality, it is very simple...I have my toggle switch set as follows...Toggle "A"-pager alert(OR), meaning the channel signal option is muted until our house tones go off, then the radio beeps and opens up to hear everything, until you reset it...then it mutes after you reset it...Toggle "B", channel monitor..meaning that while the toggle is on B, it will only monitor the channel that the selector is on, and it stays open(AND) so you hear everything, and Toggle "C", Pri scan...again, meaning that whatever channel the channel selector is on, is the pri channel, and it is also open(AND) so you can hear everything...Now, there are some other settings, like you side programmable buttons...I am not going to into all of them, but you could set one of those buttons to scan, and other options...ours are set up for side 1, the blue button, is the nuisance delete, meaning that while scanning, if a channel has a lot of traffic on it, and you start to get sick and tired of hearing it, you can push the blue button while the channel is actively talking and it will temp delete it from the scan list...now, remember, once you do anything to the radio...push the PTT button, change a channel, move a toggle switch, turn radio off/on, ect, that channel will be back in the scan list again and you will have to push the nuisance delete button again if it get;s annoying again....I use it a lot on our PD Ops channel when they aren't busy with calls, and they will just set there and run plates and DL's, and it can get very, VERY annoying listening to dispatch running plates, VIN's and DL's and reading them back to the officers, I will just push the blue button and that temp deletes it....the orange button on top is our emerg man down button...self explanatory...But I guess my point is.....Using scan is not at all a bad thing...just as long as you know what your doing when you program it...If it's programmed like our's, you can scan all day long and not miss one bit of radio traffic on your pri channel....just wanted to throw that out there...