2-Tone Frequency Viewing

Schmetzy13 · Feb 16, 2018

Does anyone know of any way to view the VHF tone frequencies a G5 is picking up, similar to the fire tone-out searching available on Unidens scanners (I know this isn't a scanner).

I've entered all of my tone frequencies correctly into my G5 and have been able to get the pager to alert when toning out from a portable radio, but when our dispatch sends the tones, the pager will not alert. I'd like to know what my G5 is essentially "hearing" when our tones come across from dispatch. I've reached out to Unication with this and they've been very responsive, but have no idea what could be going wrong.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

troymail · Feb 17, 2018

Schmetzy13 said:
Does anyone know of any way to view the VHF tone frequencies a G5 is picking up, similar to the fire tone-out searching available on Unidens scanners (I know this isn't a scanner).

Not that I am aware of - you need to know the tone frequencies before programming the G5.

I've entered all of my tone frequencies correctly into my G5 and have been able to get the pager to alert when toning out from a portable radio, but when our dispatch sends the tones, the pager will not alert. I'd like to know what my G5 is essentially "hearing" when our tones come across from dispatch. I've reached out to Unication with this and they've been very responsive, but have no idea what could be going wrong.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Are you programming the G5 for VHF/UHF 2-Tone or 2-Tone over P25? I can get mine to work for 2-Tone over conventional but it doesn't work for those same tones that are sent over P25.

sibbley · Feb 17, 2018

The City of Bethlehem in my area uses a long tone over P25 Phase 1 to dispatch Fire and EMS. I was able to setup my G4 to alert when this long tone is sent. I wonder why the 2 tone set sent over P25 doesn't work? I don't have any 2 tone on P25 to use as a test to see for myself.

Although, I did notice while setting up for the long tone, my G4 uses a generic range for tone frequencies. Maybe this could be the reason. I know from programming many different pagers the tone frequencies don't need to be exactly correct. They can be a bit off. Maybe this range is too far off for 2 tone frequencies. Or maybe it's just using the generic range for single long tone. I never looked at setting up a 2 tone.

troymail · Feb 17, 2018

sibbley said:
The City of Bethlehem in my area uses a long tone over P25 Phase 1 to dispatch Fire and EMS. I was able to setup my G4 to alert when this long tone is sent. I wonder why the 2 tone set sent over P25 doesn't work? I don't have any 2 tone on P25 to use as a test to see for myself.

Although, I did notice while setting up for the long tone, my G4 uses a generic range for tone frequencies. Maybe this could be the reason. I know from programming many different pagers the tone frequencies don't need to be exactly correct. They can be a bit off. Maybe this range is too far off for 2 tone frequencies. Or maybe it's just using the generic range for single long tone. I never looked at setting up a 2 tone.

Setting it up (from my aging memory) is more complicated than conventional 2-Tone so there could be issues there....

I was in touch with David last fall about 2-Tone over P25 when I could not get it to work. I even sent him my config which he told me was correct.

I think it is known it won't work for all situations (I'm pretty sure over and over it was said that it was designed and/or tested for tones sent from Motorola consoles). Some (newer?) P25 systems send pure tones over P25 directly. Older systems (like the one in my area possibly?) actually page over conventional and it is more or less "patched" to a P25 talkgroup. I think this "patch" scenario probably introduces noise or other interference into the signal which may cause it not work.

buddrousa · Feb 17, 2018

Troy could it be it is scanning and not getting all of both tones. Minitor 4's do not alert if the tone timing it not received A tone 3 seconds and B tone 3 seconds Long Tones are 7 seconds here but the pagers trip after 4 seconds or so. We also use Long Tones for ALL CALL.

k3sls · Feb 17, 2018

I think QCII paging has several issues on digital systems. Dropping a bit could severely affect both timing of the tones and potentially the frequency of the tone itself. Scanning could miss enough of the tone to throw the timing off completely. Plenty of systems seem to have their conventional tone system patched to a P25 TGID, but continue to rely on the conventional equipment as the primary paging system. Two local SC systems are good examples: Horry County Fire Rescue abandoned both VHF QCII paging and P25 TGID paging. Horry went to VHF alphanumeric text paging (Unication E3) as a replacement, although that had some CAD interfacing hiccups during the rollout. Generally works well now. North Myrtle Beach Fire Rescue uses both the county alphanumeric system and has also returned to VHF QCII paging. They continue to patch the tones to P25 TGIDs, but the radios apparently don't decode the tones reliably.

troymail · Feb 17, 2018

buddrousa said:
Troy could it be it is scanning and not getting all of both tones. Minitor 4's do not alert if the tone timing it not received A tone 3 seconds and B tone 3 seconds Long Tones are 7 seconds here but the pagers trip after 4 seconds or so. We also use Long Tones for ALL CALL.

Do you mean as far as 2-Tone on P25? If so, it shouldn't happen. The radio monitors a single control channel and the single talkgroup that is used for tone out.

And, conventional 2-Tone has to monitor a single specific frequency.

buddrousa · Feb 17, 2018

That is what I said as I take care of our local system. You just stated it different I posted an answer to why it may be missing pages as I do not know how you use yours.

k3sls · Feb 17, 2018

This link points to a previous discussion of paging on P25 systems. As I read it, UnicationDavid was suggesting the most reliable decode method is having a dedicated TGID for paging and parking the pager on that TGID…but still not as reliable as conventional analog paging…thus his reference to "page groups".
And some additional discussion located here.

Schmetzy13 · Feb 17, 2018

My issue is entirely with 2-Tone paging on VHF. Our dispatch center uses QCII for the tones; 1 second/3 second. The tone frequencies I have for our stations/trucks are the exact one entered into our Minitors and are non-standard frequencies. I have them entered into PPS as a custom type of paging.

spongella · Feb 18, 2018

Two-tone frequency viewing

This method is a bit out in the weeds but I can detect the tones of a transmission (PL that is) using a SDR dongle and HDSDR software. HDSDR has an audio spectrum analyzer built in, so I just read the subaudible tones off of that.

SteveC0625 · Feb 18, 2018

Schmetzy13 said:
My issue is entirely with 2-Tone paging on VHF. Our dispatch center uses QCII for the tones; 1 second/3 second. The tone frequencies I have for our stations/trucks are the exact one entered into our Minitors and are non-standard frequencies. I have them entered into PPS as a custom type of paging.

There's a very easy way to verify the tones coming from dispatch. Get yourself an app for smartphones called RadioID, fire it up, and monitor the channel until you get tones. It will give an accurate readout of the actual tones received.

Second point, have you verified that the tone info you have is matches that originally provided by dispatch? It would not be the first time that the info got changed as it got passed from user to user. An easy thing to do is download the correct tone charts and compare what you have to them. www.midians.com/pdf/tone-signaling-charts.pdf

troymail · Feb 18, 2018

Schmetzy13 said:
My issue is entirely with 2-Tone paging on VHF. Our dispatch center uses QCII for the tones; 1 second/3 second. The tone frequencies I have for our stations/trucks are the exact one entered into our Minitors and are non-standard frequencies. I have them entered into PPS as a custom type of paging.

"I have them entered into PPS as custom type of paging" - what does that mean?

Just trying to learn more (as always!)

2-Tone Frequency Viewing

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