BCD396XT/BCD996XT: Fire Tone Out for beginner

[adymoe]

Hey guys, Ive been scanning for a while now but know nothing about the Fire Tone Out feature on my BCD996XT. Basically my local fire department is dispatched by a central dispatch location that also dispatches over 10 other fire stations, all with different paging tones. Does this feature allow me to set my scanner to only play my local depatments calls and mute out the other ones?

 

[I_am_Alpha1]

Yes it will. But, you have to put it into standby mode--so you can't scan and us it as a pager at the same time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaIANBHOIi0

 

[ko6jw_2]

Yes, you can have the radio stay muted until there is a call for the station or stations you are interested in. The radio can be programed to stay un-muted or mute again after a predetermined time. I have mine un-mute for 60 seconds. If its a call I'm interested in, I'll go to scan mode.

The trick is to find the tones you want. I have an older 396t, so I had to manually determine the tones and program them. I had to use external software. Your radio has more capabilities to find tones. Here they used to test the tones at 0700 so it was simple to record them and then analyze. They tested in the station number order, so it was easy to find what was what.

There are different paging schemes and tone groups. Here we used General Electric tone groups. I used to be a reserve in department and I knew what they used. You will have to do some research. The software I had did not get the exact tone frequency, but knowing that it was GE, I could program the exact frequencies. The radio is somewhat tolerant - so don't worry if you can't get them exactly.

The 396t won't decode DTMF paging tones. Not sure about the 996xt.

Good luck.

 

[fyrboy]

I found the radio shop that services the departments in my area. They were glad to provide tone information.

 

[ko6jw_2]

Excellent. Have fun.

 

[adymoe]

Okay so confirm what I_am_alpha_1 said regarding not being able to scan and use as a pager at the same time...I cant ID search my other systems while scanning that fire frequency? I just want it to start playing the calls when it detects a certain tone and then within 60 seconds when the call is finished it can stop and I can return to hearing my police/ems as usual until another call comes out.

 

[ofd8001]

Yes - the scanner can be either "Regular scanning" or "Fire Tone Out", but not both at the same time.

What I've done is have the scanner in "Fire Tone Out Standby". If my fire department got a call that I wanted to monitor, I'd hit the "Scan" button and listen to the radio traffic. After the interesting traffic concluded, I'd manually re-start "Fire Tone Out Standby".

 

[adymoe]

Well than that sucks! My local fire dept. uses DMR Motorola TRBO so my scanner cant monitor them anyways, only the dispatch calls. It will be too complicated switching back and forth from fire tone out to regular scanning. I figured it would allow both at the same time.

 

[Voyager]

The 396t won't decode DTMF paging tones. Not sure about the 996xt.

No FTO yet marketed will support DTMF. I doubt Uniden has plans to add DTMF although that would be very nice.

 

[Voyager]

It will be too complicated switching back and forth from fire tone out to regular scanning. I figured it would allow both at the same time.

In order to decode the tone info, the scanner must be monitoring the channel. That's why it can't be scanning other channels, as it would miss the tones.

 

[adymoe]

Makes sense...so I pretty much need another scanner dedicated to fire tone out

 

[Voyager]

Yes, but the advantage is that you won't miss any traffic on that channel - even if your current scanner is receiving on another channel. The "FTO scanner" can also be an analog-only model since it won't have to decode P25, so that will save some money.

Of course, if you purchase another digital model, you can monitor a P25 channel while you are scanning other channels as well.

 

[adymoe]

Im looking into a cheap BCD15X but here in Canada its harder for us to get the good prices!

 

[DJ11DLN]

Just a suggestion, a lot of commercial gear has an option for 2-tone function...and there's still a fair amount of stuff 5+ years old floating around for sale fairly cheaply. If you could snag a unit for the band you're wanting and get it programmed for the frequency, PL, and 2-tone you need, as an RX-only unit, that should free up your scanner, maybe cheaper than buying another scanner. Especially if you get something pre-NFM, which will usually still work just fine for pager tones etc.

 

[ofd8001]

Makes sense...so I pretty much need another scanner dedicated to fire tone out

Not necessarily. . .

The DMR/MotoTrbo throws a wrench into the gears. However from a "regular" system scanning configuration it is "do-able". All you'd have to do is set the dispatch frequency to be a Priority Channel. That way even if you are scanning other channels (like police), the scanner jumps back to that dispatch frequency to see if there is active traffic. If there is, the scanner monitors that traffic.

"Fire Tone Out" is a feature on scanners for people who have the attention devoted to something other than scanning, such as sleeping. They may only wish to be disturbed, or get interested in, paying more attention to the scanner if their agency is dispatched to an incident. Then they go to the regular scanning mode.

 

[Voyager]

How many of those will do 10 tone sets, though? (reference to commercial gear for FTO)

 

[ofd8001]

"Back in the day" when I was active in the fire service, I had a Motorola portable radio that would do tone out, which I think was called "Call Alert". Getting that thing in the tone out mode and then back as a "regular" radio was a lot more cumbersome than my 396XT.

 

[DJ11DLN]

How many of those will do 10 tone sets, though? (reference to commercial gear for FTO)

You can do as many as you want with most of them. Just set each up as a separate channel entry and tone set. Some of the older stuff would only do one set but that is early-mid 1990s type of stuff.

 

[sibbley]

How many of those will do 10 tone sets, though? (reference to commercial gear for FTO)

Icom F50v/F60v will do tone 10 sets. Vertex 454 will do 16 tone sets.

 

[N9JIG]

Before I moved I had a collection of Plectron and Motorola alert receivers on various fire channels in my area for FTO functionality. After Uniden introduced FTO in the BCT15, BCD996T and comparable HH scanners I started replacing the alert receivers one by one.

The advantages of using a BCT15 or BCT15X for FTO are numerous. First is the cost of ownership. You can find a good BCT15 for $100 used or below $200 new.

You can easily program them for tone out and even use the BCT15X or another XT series scanner to find the tones for you. No software, programming cables etc. are needed.

They are flexible in that they will do toneout on any FM freq. High-band, low-band, UHF, or even 800 can be handled by the scanner. While they will do toneout on only a single freq at a time, they allow you to choose that channel easily.

One advantage of using a professional alert receiver is that some are set up with relay contacts for lighting or alert devices. They often have better sounding audio and more selective receivers.