Does anybody happen to know what it is? Thanks!
Wichita Tornado Siren Frequency
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LeeBarnes
Member
Here in Labette County, all the storm sirens are activated using the same frequencies as the fire pages. Might be a good place to start.
I can help
...I will be Whicita tomorrow (4-21) I'll see about getting that for you.
...I will be Whicita tomorrow (4-21) I'll see about getting that for you.
I enlisted the help of the members over at air raid sirens https://airraidsirens.com Dave (Rheems1) and Cruz (Stormsetter4) where able to supply me with this information...hope it is some help.....
Dave stated "Is it possible that the sirens are now operated by electronic relay or to put it a different way, is it possible that a signal is sent to the siren the same way a signal is sent to a text pager with the implementation of the P-25 system? It looks as if the county was using a P-25 system prior and re-banded up to the stupid 800mhz band which means that they have been P-25 for awhile, some places (York County, Pa is an example) is on a P-25 system now and utilizes strictly alpha pagers for dispatch. Voice is still broadcast over the "Dispatch" talkgroup but there is no voice pagers anymore at all and that also means that there are no more tones to activate cool things. The way sirens are now activated in York County is (and forgive me because I am dumb to EXACTLY how this technology works) a receiver is set up at the station (or siren location) and it also receives the text page like a field member but it instead closes a relay which makes the siren timer run. Not saying this is how Sedgwick County is doing it just a thought.... more than likely Sedgwick County is activating their sirens off of an unmarked frequency in the 154mhz band that just isn't labeled to the county under Radio Reference. That is how Three Mile Island used to activate their sirens, they broadcast the activation tone over a county specific frequency... it wasn't labeled under the county's frequencies and it wasn't shown under TMI on Radio Reference or in the old Radio Shack frequency guide (you know, back before we had the internet LOL)... you had to guess the frequency range and start scanning on test day to hear the activation tones and write down the frequency."
Cruz stated " I do know for a fact that they use FSK. Not sure on what frequency though.......FSK is a activation method that basically sends information. It is a lot more secure than 2 tone or DTMF and is usually used in two way siren systems. Here is a video of one of the Wichita thunderbolts and you can hear the ATI version of FSK in the beginning": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-xXdj-gHrs
Dave stated "Is it possible that the sirens are now operated by electronic relay or to put it a different way, is it possible that a signal is sent to the siren the same way a signal is sent to a text pager with the implementation of the P-25 system? It looks as if the county was using a P-25 system prior and re-banded up to the stupid 800mhz band which means that they have been P-25 for awhile, some places (York County, Pa is an example) is on a P-25 system now and utilizes strictly alpha pagers for dispatch. Voice is still broadcast over the "Dispatch" talkgroup but there is no voice pagers anymore at all and that also means that there are no more tones to activate cool things. The way sirens are now activated in York County is (and forgive me because I am dumb to EXACTLY how this technology works) a receiver is set up at the station (or siren location) and it also receives the text page like a field member but it instead closes a relay which makes the siren timer run. Not saying this is how Sedgwick County is doing it just a thought.... more than likely Sedgwick County is activating their sirens off of an unmarked frequency in the 154mhz band that just isn't labeled to the county under Radio Reference. That is how Three Mile Island used to activate their sirens, they broadcast the activation tone over a county specific frequency... it wasn't labeled under the county's frequencies and it wasn't shown under TMI on Radio Reference or in the old Radio Shack frequency guide (you know, back before we had the internet LOL)... you had to guess the frequency range and start scanning on test day to hear the activation tones and write down the frequency."
Cruz stated " I do know for a fact that they use FSK. Not sure on what frequency though.......FSK is a activation method that basically sends information. It is a lot more secure than 2 tone or DTMF and is usually used in two way siren systems. Here is a video of one of the Wichita thunderbolts and you can hear the ATI version of FSK in the beginning": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-xXdj-gHrs
dgruver911
Member
A quick google search pulls the the RFP that was issued for the upgrade. It states that the frequency for the sirens is under callsign KX5126; which shows as 155.025. It also stated that there was no money to replace any sirens, just the upgrade the activation system.
I found the frequency on a news video yesterday
Wichita replaced some of their older sirens with ATI junk. Caution: turn your speakers down!:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moqL8OI0TEs. Others were kept in place or moved to different locations. You're correct, though, most of that project was to upgrade the activation to some sort of two-way digital protocol.
Care to share?
155.025
Sorry for the dumb question, but are you saying if I monitor this frequency in Wichita, when they have to activate the tornado sirens, then a page will go out through this frequency? If this isn't correct, what's this frequency used for?
Thanks for the info
Used to be a two-tone page before they upgraded their activation system. Now all you'll hear is a series of data bursts. Nothing has changed with the frequency itself. Its still used to control the sirens, just with a different method for activation.
Oops
You won't even hear a digital burst. It's part of the P25 system. Just like the new fire and EMS pagers. Rather than "listening" for the activation tones or FSK burst going out over the air, they are connected to the P25 control channel just like the radios. For example.. When a page goes out for Russell EMS, you hear "Russell Dispatch, listening units stand by for EMS page", followed by a silence.. During that silence, the pagers are activated through the P25 system, then dispatch broadcasts the call.
nec911
Member
I did some research on this and found that they are set up just like the VHF System used in Shawnee County to set off their sirens. They are using DTMF and you can hear it when a change is made, poll is made or other operations are undertaken.
Believe what you want. nec911 knows what he's talking about. I believe he's actually employed by a county-level public safety agency somewhere in NE Kansas. Also, it's technologically impossible for sirens to be activated over any trunked system, at least that's the case with Federal Signal Equipment (it's states so in the SS2000 and Digital Commander operating manuals). Common routes of activation/control are typically via conventional radio repeaters using Two-Tone, DTMF, and/or FSK.
Federal uses proprietary digital signaling for polling and other commands. Here's some audio taken from a local system during silent testing: http://www.filedropper.com/wyco11_1
dgruver911
Member
PVPD730 and NEC911 are correct. You CANNOT page on P25 800. The technology does not exist. Motorola was actually working on a scaled down radio that COULD be utilized as a pager on a trunking system, but they have dropped the idea for whatever reason (perhaps, who would pay $1000 or more for a 10 channel pager/walkie?). And the reason you don't hear tones on the 800 side is they are likely using Motorola consoles, and Motorola doesn't allow you to send out tones across multiple channels at the same time (unlike our old Zetron consoles). So the silence on the 800 dispatch talkgroup means the tones are going out on VHF or UHF. If you try to send tones across both at the same time it drops one channel or the other, as we found out this week with our new MCC5500 consoles. And trying to quickly reconfigure them in the middle of a thunderstorm-turned tornado warning was a real joy.
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Some places over here patch their VHF frequencies into the trunked systems, and you can actually hear tones go out over the 700/800 side, however, it's not the primary route of fire paging/siren activation...all of that is still done on the conventional side. Timing of the two-tone sequential paging had to be adjusted for the radio switchovers (consequently the tones are now annoyingly 1-2 seconds longer). Perhaps that's what's causing confusion with KD0TAZ? Our PSAP will be getting the MCC consoles soon and hopefully they get any "kinks" worked out prior to implementation. Sounds like a nightmare dgruver!
firefive76
Member
I think Shawnee Co uses FSK for their siren commands, not DTMF.
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