Sussex County 911 Dispatch Quick Call 1

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Mbk127k

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Just curious but heard Sussex County dispatching fire marshal to a structure fire in Hardyston Township.

Is there a reason why they are using Quick-Call 1 tones?, most emergency services have gone away with those tones.
 

RocketNJ

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Haha. They copied Morris County.

Morris uses QC1 when paging out the Fire Marshal. Not to alert them but because it is cool sounding :)
It is a tip of the cap to the old TV show Emergency!
 

Mbk127k

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Haha. They copied Morris County.

Morris uses QC1 when paging out the Fire Marshal. Not to alert them but because it is cool sounding :)
It is a tip of the cap to the old TV show Emergency!


Oh okay, wasn't sure. I know Rockland County uses them to set off their sirens but over the last few years a lot of them from my understanding went with the DTMF tones to set them off.

I just thought that was interesting and thought maybe it had to do with tripping a device or something.
 

SC9-1-1

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Since we work closely with Morris we also use it for our coordinators so Morris and Sussex MAC's can identify a call they might respond to.
 

radioman2001

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Motorola hasn't supported the old 2+2 "Emergency!" type non standard DTMF tones for years. Rockland still has some, as some agencies in the Buffalo area I heard when up there. I don't know what decoders they are using, and most agencies using DTMF are now using Whelan's format ( I believe also a non standard DTMF) for security. I put a lot of those in some time ago.
I have an old cassette tape of Rocklands 7PM test which ran about 4-5 min from 1978 around somewhere.
 

GTR8000

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Quote"
Actually, the Knox format is most popularly used now, not Whelen.

Depends Knox for Knox box, and Whelen for siren controls. There is no Knox tones for Whelen sirens. Two different companies, Federal Signal is Knox and well you Whelen is for Whelen.
Rockland uses Knox format DTMF tones for siren control, which replaced the QCI tones a few years ago. Has nothing to do with "Whelen sirens".
 

902

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Whelen uses plain ol' DTMF, but in a precise timing sequence. If the timing is off, they won't decode. I had about 150 tornado sirens in a system I used to manage before I vested out. The sequence also allows for polling and diagnostics, so if you have the E969 or E2010 units, you can collect maintenance data. But they're footprint hogs being large hunks of mostly vacant plastic with a circuit board, display, and a keypad membrane. So, most consoles can emulate the sequences if the timing can be set. The SCADA boxes could be placed "somewhere else" out of the way, and maybe put a printer with a Centronics interface on them.

Some old tornado and fire siren systems used QC1 to activate, but I haven't seen anything recent to decode them, and if they break, I'm guessing whomever maintains them needs a "plan B."

Motorola and Zetron supported the 2+2 format. I have to plead guilty to unnecessarily putting a 2+2 sequence into my former department's CentraCom II alerting stack, but I grew out of it, and so did they. It was kinda cool, but a few LA area comm guys have told me it was notorious for falsing. Funny thing is that aircraft use them on HF for SELCAL, but their decoders are software driven now, and falsing resistant.

Knox has proprietary tone frequencies for their sequences, and are time coded.
 

radioman2001

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Quote"
Knox has proprietary tone frequencies for their sequences, and are time coded.

I know I tried to emulate with software to test key boxes after install, never worked right. Finally using good recording software was able to emulate on a bench setup.

If not for LA Fire and Emergency! I doubt there would have been too many depts using the 2+2 format.
 

902

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Quote" If not for LA Fire and Emergency! I doubt there would have been too many depts using the 2+2 format.
You know, it was fairly popular for Motorola in the 60s. I went to a hamfest in the last century and came home with a pair of boat anchor reed tone alerting panels. One was an early QC-2 that outputted with a DC keying current. The other was a QC-1. They both had solenoids that popped the buttons up after the tones. They went into the dumpster in the mid to late 80s. A lot of stuff used Bramco decoders.

Did you ever listen to Newark Fire Department's repeater when it was still in carrier squelch? Northampton County PA used to alert their volunteers and test sirens using QC-1. It all came through the Newark repeater.
 

GTR8000

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If not for LA Fire and Emergency! I doubt there would have been too many depts using the 2+2 format.
QCI was widely used all over the country well before that TV show was even conceived of, and most had no clue or care what LAFD was doing.
 
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GTR8000

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QC-1 yes, QC-2 no. Our department had Plectrons starting in 1964 and they were QC-1
Right, and so if many places were already using QCI, aka 2+2, prior to the show Emergency ever being aired...exactly how could the show/LAFD have influenced so many departments across the country? :unsure: QCI was in pretty wide use by the early 60s.
 
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