What kind of DTMF paging is CALFire using? Depending on the area, paging is sent at different speeds. Just curious
CalFire paging tones
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scottyhetzel
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scanriverside dot com Resources / paging tones.
BirkenVogt
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It seems they are trying to speed up the tone-outs somewhat, so they have sped up the DTMF and sometimes the Motorola pager times quite a bit in some cases. It all depends on the individual receiving the page and the decoder in their radio whether this works or not, so some are still set at the slower, more reliable speed.
ScannerDude244
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CZU and SLU have fast DTMF and 2 tones makes dispatch faster
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Those are not DTMF tones. Those are 1+1 pager tones. DTMF tones sound like the tones on a telephone when you press a button.
RRU shortened the length of the the tones several years ago. Dispatches have been shortened over the years. Unless something has changed, they are not to give a time out time when dispatching but I think it is habit and no one enforces it.
mvu and shu both use DTMF for 'b' stations.
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Seems that in BDU, schedule B stations have a DTMF four digit sequence to activate the station, while the same station also has a Motorola two tone sequence for radio pagers.
There has been direction given to move to a "fast" format for both DTMF and 2-tone paging tones. I was told that it was a statewide thing, but it is moving at varying speeds in different Units. My Unit has only done a few (even though the plan was to have the whole Unit converted before fire season) because we had some alerting problems with the first few stations we tested. We were doing this testing soon after the narrowbanding was completed, and we discovered all kinds of 'holes' and 'glitches' in our coverage after we narrowbanded, so that may be part of the issue. The point being that we stopped converting to fast paging after only a few stations and a few overhead pagers, and have never resumed the conversion.
I have heard that there are a few units who are almost completely converted, but I cannot confirm that.
I have heard that there are a few units who are almost completely converted, but I cannot confirm that.
In answer to your original question, CAL FIRE uses a 4-digit DTMF tone for station alerting (in some Units, for all stations; in some Units, only for "B" houses), and a standard two-tone alert for pagers (and some stations).
The 'standard' DTMF tones are about 150 milliseconds (ms) each, with a 50-75 ms gap. I don't know the settings for the new 'fast' format.
The two-tones vary across the spectrum depending upon what legacy system the area has used in the past. Even in my Unit, we use mostly Motorola QCII formats, but we have some customs, some Zetron, even an old Plectron format or two...there is one L/G department who still has an AvCall (2+2) tone in their alert stack (think the old "Emergency!" TV show station tones).
baayers
Member
In SLO County the DTMF tones were sped up about 2 years ago with the exception of Cambria and 1 other that I cant remember at the moment however 2 weeks ago most of the tones were slowed back down
BirkenVogt
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Who still has the 2+2?
cal fire paging
the 2+2 format is still in use in Shasta County last i monitored. But as far back at '92 we(Shasta College) has one half of the 2+2 added to the paging format because of "falsing" and the fact we carried minitors, off duty.
Used to be all the Crews and buggys used the 2+2 format back then......
the 2+2 format is still in use in Shasta County last i monitored. But as far back at '92 we(Shasta College) has one half of the 2+2 added to the paging format because of "falsing" and the fact we carried minitors, off duty.
Used to be all the Crews and buggys used the 2+2 format back then......
Newcastle Fire still has the tone in their stack...not sure how its used (they also have a standard 2-tone), but its still there.
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BirkenVogt
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OK, I was thinking you meant NEU. As far as I can remember they got rid of all the 2+2s in the early 2000s, the outlying stations, 33, 30(?), 11, 42 had them plus the crew buses. Also Placer Consolidated had one if I recall but it went away with the takeover, did it not?
Do you have the capacity to dispatch on Placer if they go down?
Do you have the capacity to dispatch on Placer if they go down?
AA6KA
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I am in progress of a comprehensive Tone out list for the Sac Valley. It is posted on my yahoo group.
It is still a work in progress and any help would be appreciated. When I can I will split it up by location and post it to the DB.
FireToneOutsSacramentoValley : Fire Tone Outs-Sacramento Valley
It is still a work in progress and any help would be appreciated. When I can I will split it up by location and post it to the DB.
FireToneOutsSacramentoValley : Fire Tone Outs-Sacramento Valley
Came across this YouTube video of an old SLU dispatch from the early 1980s back when they were in region 5. It has the old 2+2 station tones and the 1+1 pager tones. I believe the same 1+1 tones are still used today for the same pagers.
1980s CDF/SLO County Fire Vegetation Fire Dispatch - YouTube
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