Uniden Bearcat BCD396XT and BCD996XT Fire Tone Out

[JASII]

I know that there have been quite a few posts in the past about Fire Tone Out, but I have two things that I can't seem to find being addressed in the previous posts. Just to put this in perspective, right now I have been using both my BCD396XT and BCD996XT in the Tone Out Search mode on the same frequency to log tones being used in my area. I have the BCD996XT running under Butel ARC-XT PRO and logging the finds. Both are monitoring the same frequency. I have the BCD396XT set to infinite delay. The BCD996XT is set
to zero delay.

In the past I seem to recall reading that the tolerance of frequencies are usually within 3 hZ of the standard tone. Occasionally I will find tones displayed in the history log as much as 5 hZ from known standard tones. Not a real big deal, but I am wondering if that is similar to what others here have experienced?

The other thing I observed today is on one particular fire call the BCD396XT displayed a different pair of tones than the BCD996XT logged. Again, both are on the exact same frequency and have a delay set to zero for the 996. Is it possible that on some fire calls more than one set of tones is being transmitted and the 396XT captures the first set and holds it on infinite delay, but the BCD996XT somehow didn't log both sets of tones because they were sent so quickly?

What I hope of eventually do, after I have a list of some of the more common tones used in my area, is to scan a group of 10 pairs at a time to verify the usage for each.

Also, can somebody refresh my memory. When a given fire department has more than one set of tones, is it more common to have a common A tone or common B tone? Or is that not as common as it once was?

 

[scannersnstuff]

in a nutshell here's what i know. <or think i know>. the fire tone out scanner's decode pretty close to the accurate tone frequency, but are not "dead on". in the past, i have had my pager programmed by using the tone's found with the scanner. this has never caused me to have a problem with falsing or missed tone out's. sometime's,but not alway's the a and b tone's on different tone pair's are pretty close. i do know that it is sometime's a royal pita when a town has multiple fire and ems district's,to figure out who got toned out on what pair. i.e. have the scanner monitoring in standby for the evening test. 5 set's of tone's go out. you capture all 5 by scrolling thru the tone out slot's. the dispatcher say's "this is the nightly test of abc township's fire co. # 1, fire co. # 2, and ems tone's. sometime's they can put out plenty of different tone's.
for example, middletown twp. in monmouth county n.j. has 10 fire co's,5 ems squad's ,plus several add'l support unit's. anyway, fire tone out has added a whole new sub-interest into scanning.