OK , I have never heard Quick call tones, or anything elese on 8 fire .? Is this all pagers, (alpha numeric), I used to be able to know the tones long ago when i was a vol. FF.... Is it the AN pagers ??????
Another stupid question/ tone outs?????
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kenjicam
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If I remember correctly, and this information from several years ago. San Bernardino operates their own paging system in which all responses are paged out on to the responding units. It's on a 900mhz paging frequency licensed to them and is POGSAG format.
The pagers where issued to each in-service apparatus to back up the TRS and MDT's.
I'm not sure if the system is still up or not, but that was what they were doing a few years ago.
The pagers where issued to each in-service apparatus to back up the TRS and MDT's.
I'm not sure if the system is still up or not, but that was what they were doing a few years ago.
This information is correct, and the system is still up and running.
Correct, CONFIRE (Comm Center) quit using tone-outs over 10 years ago. Those agencies which can afford MDCs can get their calls that way as well. All agencies dispatched by CONFIRE still have alpha-paging (the county system activates VERY QUICKLY) since good ISO ratings require two methods of contact (paging and radio-alerts or MDC).
When I was down in the north desert area in 1995-98, Comm Center still toned the Baker and Trona volunteers over VHF, but all other traffic was on 800. Do they still use the VHF pagers for the remote areas, or have ALL the stations gone to alpha pagers only?
All gone to alpha - Comm Center couldn't tone out even if they wanted to anymore. The radio techs deactivated the tone encoders in the Motorola console and removed the Zetron modules years ago. If an agency wants to get a bid for dispatching, they are told they must subscribe to alpha paging thru the County system. (At least the small monthly fee per pager includes repairs and labor).
Wow...so if an agency doesn't want to use alpha pagers, their only contract choice is CALFIRE? Interesting...
Yes. I'm not the final authority for CONFIRE but that seems to be the case and it's been confirmed with smaller agencies that have recently contracted with CALFIRE for dispatch.
In their defense, my speculation is that it leads to consistency in dispatching - dispatchers can't mistakenly use the wrong site or tones for dispatch. Simply pressing "Enter" and letting all text dispatches and 800mhz station alerts go to the paging system gets calls out quickly and error free.
They still can make one type of mistake: I've heard times where the voice dispatch was mistakenly transmitted on the Valley system when it should have gone over the desert system, but since the alpha paging goes EVERYWHERE, and the station alerts are a data packet over 800mhz, at least the text info and station alerts went out to the crews.
In their defense, my speculation is that it leads to consistency in dispatching - dispatchers can't mistakenly use the wrong site or tones for dispatch. Simply pressing "Enter" and letting all text dispatches and 800mhz station alerts go to the paging system gets calls out quickly and error free.
They still can make one type of mistake: I've heard times where the voice dispatch was mistakenly transmitted on the Valley system when it should have gone over the desert system, but since the alpha paging goes EVERYWHERE, and the station alerts are a data packet over 800mhz, at least the text info and station alerts went out to the crews.
Thanks for the info all!
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