Fire Tones & Scanners

[andy404ns]

I used ComTekk 2-Tone Decoder to determine the tones in my community. I just downloaded the software and had dispatch test my depts pagers. There are a number of places you can get this software. Just google "ComTekk".

Oh boy. Here come the people asking if anyone would be willing to share the registration key because they don't want to spend the $30.

By the way, does anyone want to share the registration key?

 

[mikie333]

So just to confirm, the BCT-15 has the capibilities i'm looking for?

thanks for the great replies!

 

[srt1026]

http://www.wpascanner.com/wiki/index.php?title=Hardware:Tone_Out

 

[ydoc324]

How do I tell the fq of the tone?

If you have a recording I have software that can decode 2 tone

 

[firefighter89]

When I first started my old department, we didn't have a pager or radio for me so I just locked a scanner on dispatch channel. After awhile I could pick out my stations calls while sleeping through the others

My department is short on pagers as well so that is what I do. And yes I can sleep through other calls but I wake up when my tones hit.

 

[chrismol1]

And yes I can sleep through other calls but I wake up when my tones hit.

that must take some skill there

 

[firefighter89]

that must take some skill there

I can't explain it but I always wake up when my tones hit. I guess after doing it this way for over a year I have just memorized the tones.

 

[N9JIG]

I have had great luck using the BC-15 and BC330 as fire tone out receivers, I use 4 BC-15's at home to monitor local fire channels. They have been very reliable and I have never had them not open on the proper tones. For $225 you can't go wrong. Easy to program, allows 10 tone sets on a channel, variable alerts and alpha-tagged alert codes are all great features.

All that said, I would not rely on a scanner for life safety purposes, it wasn't really intended to be used for response personnel, but for consumers and hobbyists.

 

[hfxChris]

This feature would be a lot more useful to me if you could either have it listen for multiple sets of tones on multiple frequencies, OR listen for any tones on multiple frequencies. Reason is, the fire departments here use a number of different tones (for each station, region, zone, etc) on multiple frequencies. Setup a tone-out bank where you plug in your frequencies (all of them), and either plug in your sets of tones or tell it to alert on any tones received, and it just sits there and scans through the frequencies. Ah well...