Fire Tone-Out And AvCall

[ssims]

My FD uses AvCall for siren activation at the individual companies. Is there a way to determine the mixed tone frequency and use that for the Fire Tone-Out function of the BCT-15? I know the tones that are being mixed to make the two-tone sequence, but I'm not sure how to determine what the mixed tone frequency is. For example, company 1 uses AvCall BP (tone 1 mixture of 346.7 and 1083.9) and JM (tone 2 mixture of 716.1 and 977.2).

Thanks in advance for any assistance you can provide.

[DaveIN]

Did you try putting the tone set you listed in to see if it would work? You can also put one tone in and leave the second one blank, the first one being a long tone, and see if that works.

[rdale]

He's saying Tone 1 is a mix of two tones, and Tone 2 is a mix of two other tones.

To guess I'd take the average of each, but might be better if you can hook it up to your PC and find the tone that way or find someone with an XT.

[DaveIN]

OK, in that case maybe what you need is here: Fire Tone Out - The RadioReference Wiki

[ssims]

I suppose I could try entering one tone from each pair and see if that works. While that has the possibility to generate a false positive, I don't think anyone in the area uses any of the four individual tones for other purposes.

[ocguard]

Never heard of AvCall tones, but based on your description, it sounds identical to Quik-Call 1 (2+2) tones, like the tones used in the TV show EMERGENCY! and your station's siren tone probably sounds like this.

The fire tone-out feature of the Uniden DMA scanners will not decode these codes, because the encoder essentially "plays" the two mixed tones at the same time. Simply choosing one tone or taking the average of the two tones will not produce a usable tone value.

I'd love to see the decoder your fire department uses to receive these tones!

[rdale]

Why not just use tone-out search and see what the scanner thinks? Why won't that work?

[ssims]

@rdale,

1) How do I do that?
2) Wouldn't that require me to be watching the scanner right when the tones are dropped?

[rdale]

You have to hook it up to a computer and follow the WIki above, if you or someone has a XT then you can put it in search mode.

[jvdet]

XT Fire Tone out decodes my area fine - so what? but then i have to leave it on standby and can't scan the rest of the other systems/groups?
can i scan the systems /groups and will the radio alert when theres a page while on another channel or group?how to do it,
otherwise i dont see the need for knowing the FD paging tones, pl/dpl works better to isolate just the department i want and ignors the rest,
or does the radio just show tones

[UPMan]

Fire Toneout only works in standby mode.

It is useful for off-duty and volunteer firefighters (and others) who want an inexpensive way to get fire pages when they are not otherwise using their scanner.