Fire Tone out on BCT-15 or BCD996

[Coastie127]

I looked at the manual on the BCT-15 for the tone out and it did'nt say what i was looking for, see i am a firefighter and i like the feature the BCT-15 has with Fire Paging Alert, but one feature i am wondering is can you scan the channels while having Fire Tone Out on at all, because i would like to use the function while scanning other channels but leave the Fire Tone Out on a channel that has Priority.

[ka3jjz]

AFAIK no, you can do Fire tone out or scanning but not both at the same time 73s Mike

[N9JIG]

Each of the Uniden scanners with Fire Tone Out (BC15, 996, 396 and 330) only allow you to monitor Fire Tone Outs exclusively, there is no way to have it scan other channels at the same time.

[Coastie127]

Originally Posted by N9JIG

Each of the Uniden scanners with Fire Tone Out (BC15, 996, 396 and 330) only allow you to monitor Fire Tone Outs exclusively, there is no way to have it scan other channels at the same time.

Maybe Uniden should coome up with a way you could do that, i remember one of my older scanners from Uniden that you could have the Wx frequency on Priority and scan every channel on the scanner and have it still monitoring the Wx frequency in alert mode, i wish that maybe Uniden could come up with a thing like that, is there a way i could mail Uniden or post a suggestion to them if they ever come up with a newer model scanner.

[N9JIG]

It would have to involve 1 of 2 options:

1) If they use a Priority Mode then the radio would need to bounce from standard scanning to check for tone outs. If modulation is detected on the Tone Out channel the radio would have to wait for both tones to come thru, thus tying up the radio for about 5 seconds every time any traffic was heard on the tone out channel. In addition, depending on how often it checks for traffic on the tone out channel it is likely that large portions would be missed, perhaps causing the radio to not detect true fire tones. If they shorten up the timing required for toneouts then too much false hits would likely occur.

2) They could use a second receiver for toneouts, but this would be too expensive and confusing to operate. It would be easier to go out and buy a second BC15 to dedicate to toneouts (or if you are a real geek like me a third, fourth, fifth and sixth...)

[Chauffeur6]

Or just buy a cheap, used Minitor off eBay, get your frequency and tones in it, and call it a day. MUCH more reliable way to go, especially if you're using this as a primary means of alerting you to respond. Does your dept not issue you guys pagers?