Baltimore County Tone Outs

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1080iAddict

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I have a few that I measured back when the 396 first came to market while looking for specific units in my area, and then I quit measuring. Here are my notes. Enjoy!!! (format is "TONE A/TONE B")

E413;E414 950/871
M415 950/910
E401 1232/1130
M325 1180/1465
E56 871/1287
M19 1985/1743
E311;T313 1180/1287
E2 1598/1082
E19 1985/1598
M14 1820/1344
EMS5 1530/1669
E301 1180/1130
E391 992/1669
M2 1598/1180
M56 871/1669
E493 1287/1036
E431 950/1465
E501 1287/1130
E422 1232/1403
T323 1180/1403

Also, and you'll like this..... the alternating high/low tone that is used to announce fire boxes and rescue boxes can be programmed into the 396 - the tones are 1500/800. This is great, cause if you use this tone, the 396 will alert for the major boxes and stay silent for all the other routine calls (well, they are not routine if you called for help of course!!). I know this works because I have tested it and it alerted numerous times!!!

Enjoy.
 

patrolman123

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Im wroking on some Baltimore Co tones

I am now set up to determine tones for the fire calls. I am working on Baltimore county plectron tones. I can post them. Im getting conflicting tone outs for some units. Hence some may be a little off. Let me know what everyone thinks.
 

patrolman123

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Tone Outs

Here is an un-completed list of tone outs for the Baltimore county fire department. I believe that most of them are correct. Please help me to make sure they are correct. If you find any conflicts please let me know. Additionally I am working on more tones and will add them as I record and decode them.
 

mobilejoe

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Maryland
Tone Outs

Here is a list from a thread that was on the watch desk, not sure if it up to date and accurate.
 

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Dispatcher308

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Your Welcome

Your Welcome Guys, those tones were the tones I got from when I worked at the 911 Center for Baltimore Co. I had to locate them and it took me a while. They are from 04/07/2000 so some tones are missing like Ambo 435 and MET 21, there maybe a few others that they may have added since then that I am not aware of.

Also I left some tones out that were not of real impotance. I just included the major tones.

I did not post them on the Watch Desk, I just posted them here, I guess someone cut and pasted those. I posted them early Monday morning on Radio Reference.
 
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ocguard

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Is there a way to use the 396 to "read" the tones on the air? I've looked and looked!
 

Dispatcher308

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Pro-97 if you need frequencies or talkgroups go into the Database of this website and you can see all of the frequencies and talkgroups you wish or need.

Nathan
 

JHG

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Lutherville, MD
396 not working properly

You seem to have a handle on the "tone-out" feature on trunk trackers. I just bought a 396 and have entered the tone-out freq. for Co.30 and the correct receiving freq. (46.46). I had a friend run a test on his signal generating equipment with the correct freq. but the radio did not alert. I set the time delay to "off", the modulation to "auto", and the attenuator to "off". Any suggestions on what may be wrong.
 
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Mod. FM
Att. OFF
Delay. INFINATE
Make sure you have the right tones and put it on toneout standby.
With all the calls 30 gets I bet you have at least a dozen tries at it a day.
If it doesn't work PM me
 

JHG

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tone-out works ok

The list that "Dispatcher 308" has posted appears to be 100% accurate and the settings that "WestSide Native" has posted are also correct. I call Uniden's 800 number and they verified that they are correct. After making the corrections in my 396, it works great. The only thing is that you cannot be trunking or scanning conventional channels and still receive the alert. I mentioned to the Uniden rep that it was a mistake not to have the feature on the 396's (setting a priority channel in the trunk mode) that was available on the last model of the trunk tracker. He said he would pass it on for possible up-dates.
 

ocguard

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Priority Talkgroups

Unfortunately, there is no way to effectively monitor a trunked system (or conventional channels for that matter) and monitor a channel for tone-outs at the same time with almost any scanner or radio. When scanning, the 396 "samples" each system for a period of time, monitoring for activity, then moves to the next system to be monitored and samples it, and so on. In order for the scanner to activate on a paging tone, the scanner has to recieve "enough" of both tones to read them. You'd constantly be missing tones, especially with Baltimore County's tones, since they're so short.

As far as having priority talkgroups, there is no way for the scanner to truely do this either. On actual system radios, the radio is always recieving a control signal, even when it's unmuted on a voice channel (in the form of sub-audible data streams), therefore it will "know" immediately when there's activity on the priority group, and switch to monitor it (also nice because it eliminates the periodic "drops" heard during conventional priority scanning when the radio samples the priority channel). WIth the previous trunktrackers, the scanner would "check" the priority talkgroup more often while scanning, and "leave" a held talkgroup to check the control channel for activity on the priority talkgroup, very ineffective because of the time consumed while the scanner "does it's thing"
 

ocguard

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Interesting note for double engine stations

Just a note for those monitoring the career stations with double engine companies. So long as only ONE engine is being dispatched, the first tone it always used. When both engines are dispatched at the same time, the second engine function is used. For example, Engine 1 is dispatched on it's own for a vehicle fire. Two minutes later, Engine 101 is dispatched for a fire alarm. On both occurances, the FIRST engine tone is used, because only one engine is sent. Second example, a building fire in station one's area is dispatched, and both engines from 1 are sent on the same dispatch. The second engine function, and ONLY the second function is sent. This activates a separate alerting sequence in the station, signifying that both engines are to turn out. This is important, because if you're monitoring a career station with double engines, you NEED to set both tones in you're scanner, or you may miss a call. This holds true for Stations 1, 4, 6, and 7.
 

ocguard

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One last thing...

One last comment about monitoring tone-outs on the Baltimore County system, then I will end my longwindedness. While it's nice that you can use the plectron tones to listen in on career dispatches on the Baltimore County system, just note that, with respect to career operations, these tones really don't DO anything anymore (with the exception of command staff). All career stations in Baltimore County are controlled by MOSCAD, which is a digital data stream sent on a trunked channel. CAD still sends both the plectron tones and the MOSCAD sequences with each dispatch. If the CAD system goes down, chances are, the dispatchers aren't going to be wasting their time punching out the career plectrons (they're supposed to hit BCs and EMS DOs for their pagers, but they don't even remember THAT sometimes - manual operations can be crazy). So if the CAD crashes, don't count on your BC doing it's thing with tone-outs.
 

JHG

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ocguard,

Thanks for you insite on the 396 matters. Just a fyi, living in Lutherville I don't think I'd have a problem listening to BCFD. A friend of mine (who has a son in the BCFD) who lives west and north of me has a digital scanner (not a 396) and he said he had no problem receiving the 800 trunked digital transmission. My 396 would only get, on the best of days, only 1 bar signal strength indicator. After reading some messages on the 396 website, I ordered a 1/2 wave dipole antenna from Waltel Communications in Texas. At my home, at least I can now get at least 2, if not 3 bars on the signal strength indicator. On the road, full strength. Works well for the other frequencies ranges also. Just thought I'd pass that along.
 
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