one freq

[landonjensen]

hi
i live in arcadia ca, and their fire dept is contracted with verdugo communications for thier dispatch. is there anyway that on my scanner i can listen to only arcadias calls? they charter about 7 other cities around arcadia.
thanks
lj

 

[kingpin]

I am assuming they the other fire departments are dispartched on this same frequency here. We have a similar setup in my county. If they are dispatched via 2 tone, the newer Uniden scanners can decode this and you can in the end, use the fire tones for the station you want to monitor to break the squelch.

 

[Colin9690]

Seeing that you have a PRO-95, you won't be able to set tone-outs. As Kingpin said, the new Unidens can be set to only tone out for the FD that you specify. Other than that, you are out of luck.

BTW, if you are really serious about hearing ONLY your FD and no one else, you can buy a pager...

 

[landonjensen]

what good does the pager do?

 

[kingpin]

what good does the pager do?

If you're refering to the fire pager the members carry, it listens for the tones transmitted before the broadcast begins and it sounds an alert and opens the squelch. The newer Uniden scanners emulate this. But, you have to find out what tones dispatch is using to activate the pagers. There's some threads around that tell you how to do it.

 

[landonjensen]

where can you buy the pagers, and how much?

 

[landonjensen]

do you mean the tone as in this? this is thier main dispatch channel for all the depts
107.2 PL

 

[kingpin]

do you mean the tone as in this? this is thier main dispatch channel for all the depts
107.2 PL

When the department is dispatched, you you physically hear a 1-2 second tone folowed by another tone? See the site www.foleyfire.org for an example ( I built it). We are dispatched on the standard two tone system that most fire departments use.

Profiding your department is dispatched this way, you can get a pager like a Minitor 3, 4, or 5 that can be programmed. You can expect to pay 100-300 for one. Quite a bit of money to just monitor one channel whereas a Uniden BR330T will cost you about $230 and is much more versatile.

You can also (if you're old enough), join the department and they will issue you your very own pager.... but you're going to have to respond to keep it. lol

 

[landonjensen]

all fire depts have pagers?

 

[Colin9690]

all fire depts have pagers?

All have paging tones that open up PA systems in the fire house etc. Most volunteers carry pagers, since they are not actually in the firehouse. In a larger city (staffed firehouses), firefighters usually don't carry pagers physically. Instead, they are alerted by the station's PA system, which is opened by pager tones. In essence, the PA system is like a "giant fixed pager".

So to answer the question, yes, all departments have paging tones, but different departments use them in different ways.

 

[BoxAlarm187]

FWIW, there's also the FRAP from Motorola, which can be used on the trunked systems in lieu of the two-tone sequential paging. It uses inaudible tones to alert the fire station of a call, and can be used to turn the lights on, the stove off, open bay doors, change traffic signals in front of the station, things like that.