Tampa Bay Area Fire Tine-Outs

[CanesFan95]

How come we don't seem to have any FDs that use 2-tone paging? The best I can find is Manatee County that uses DTMF tones. Pinellas uses some weird thing with a quick blip of like 6 tones (what is that format called?). Hillsborough / Tampa doesn't even use any kind of tones. There's no pagers that I know of that can be used in any of these counties.

 

[Bote]

How come we don't seem to have any FDs that use 2-tone paging?

Because it's not 1973 any more.

They are very likely using a county digital paging system or an alerting system that uses TCP/IP links or the cellular network.

Uniden was just a teeny bit late to the party with their tone decoding feature.

 

[CanesFan95]

Does anyone know what protocol the Pinellas tones are called?

 

[CanesFan95]

But a lot of FDs still use toneouts. If you don't use toneouts, then you can't use a pager which is a shame. Is there even a pager that can work on Pinellas County's style / protocol of rapid tones they use?

 

[tampabaynews]

Tone voice pagers don't work with trunked systems. There would need to be a conventional simulcast frequency in order for it to work. We don't have much of that around here.

Most Tampa Bay Area agencies use text pagers. It's more convenient to have a written record of call info and text pagers are smaller than most voice pagers. Even text pagers will disappear in favor of cellular.

Pinellas moved to an IP-based alerting system a few years ago. Even when the radio was the primary method of transmitting unique tones, it didn't set off pagers. A radio/decoder setup was utilized at each station. They've had text POCSAG pagers for some time as well.

So no, there's no voice pager that works with Pinellas.

 

[TampaTyron]

If one were so inclined, they could get a discriminator tapped scanner and the program called PDW. If you know the frequency that the agency uses for their text pages (typically Verizon or AMS in this part of the country). Then, you could observe text paging in real time. If you were really creative, then you could program up pagers with the CapCodes of your favorite trucks to follow the action. But, this may not be legal in your area. Please check local laws. TT

 

[wardaddy]

Does anyone know what protocol the Pinellas tones are called?

I seem to remember someone on here once claim they used MODAT.

 

[CanesFan95]

It does sound similar to that, but it's a little different. I've always wondered if the slower 2-tone format works better. Because if there's a quick little chip of static, one of the multiple fast tones could be missed and the station bells won't go off. But with the slower 2-tone, the tones are long enough that even if there was a blip of static, the tones could still be decoded.

 

[KC0MPD]

You can still hear pages for Citrus County Fire on 46.100 MHz. They get station alerting through the trucks 800 radio system and they get information from CAD to their cell phones through a commercial vendor.

 

[ipfd320]

Martin County still uses Tone Out only once on 154.010 then diercted to a tac channel by dispatch

 

[Citywide173]

If one were so inclined, they could get a discriminator tapped scanner and the program called PDW. If you know the frequency that the agency uses for their text pages (typically Verizon or AMS in this part of the country). Then, you could observe text paging in real time. If you were really creative, then you could program up pagers with the CapCodes of your favorite trucks to follow the action. But, this may not be legal in your area. Please check local laws. TT

Two different types of paging. He's referring to sequential tone paging to open a radio receiver followed by voice dispatch over the fire department frequencies.

Last I had seen, decoding POCSAG/GOLAY/FLEX on any of the common carrier frequencies is pretty much illegal everywhere in the US.