AA Co. FD Tone Outs

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rjbell

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Jan 27, 2004
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Glen Burnie, MD
Anyone figured out the fire dept. tone out information for AA County. This would be the information needed to enter into the BCD996T to use the tone out function.

Thanks
 

Llwellyn

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Mar 25, 2004
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As Eric said, they're on the database page. There's a couple of them still missing; station 4 hadn't finished construction at the time and the other stations actually had no runs for a 3-day period. I plan to try to catch the missing ones sometime soon once I get my "listening post" back in order.
 

mjohn

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Jun 29, 2006
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Luckily i'm AACO and was able to use this great resource but just by interest, whats the technique used to detect and decode these tones? I guess you could record to PC and use a sound program, but I wouldnt think that would be very accurate.

Llwellyn, you have a 396T so I thought i'd ask you.. I have 10 AACO tones in my 396T and run Tone-Out Standby. It seems to go through these channels quite slowly. Is the scanner really that slow, or is it just thumbing through the channels but monitoring for all tones at its usual speed? Luckily i'm monitoring tones on the same channel (154.0100), if I had two groups, say AACO and BCO, would the speed be the same?

Thanks!
 

Llwellyn

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I used a recording sampled at 44100 mono and used two different software frequency counters (counter.exe and a musical tuner) along with Audacity to do the looping. A couple of the tones were from established published sources elsewhere, but everything I submitted was verified by hand to make sure it was still accurate at that time. It was accurate to within 3Hz which is by far close enough when you know what paging system is being used. Some of it I just did by ear too, had the computer generate tone in one channel while playing the mono sample into the other channel.

The 396T can only tone out for a single RF frequency at once; having two groups of two different departments only works if they both tone out on the same frequency. You can tone out for multiple AA stations at once but not for an AA station and a Balt County Station for example.

I don't use the tone out feature except for some testing that I was doing trying to help someone with Baltimore City, however when it is in tone-out standby it should be monitoring very quickly. If you've never updated the firmware in the 396T, that may be the problem. If you're using a 996, I assume that it has updated firmware with regard to the fire tone-out but you can check Uniden's site to be sure.
 

mjohn

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Jun 29, 2006
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Thanks for the info Llwellyn, sounds like a task to check, discover and verify these tone-outs.

The unit is new and she has the latest firmware, 1.11.03, according to Uniden's site. I doubt i'll use the Tone-out feature as I have memorized the station numbers closest to me and that I care about. My tone-out standby does a channel a second it seems. I'll have to play with it more and may need to contact Uniden if I cant find something i'm doing wrong. It would be nice to use the feature though now that I think about it. When i'm expecting a quiet night at home and want to narrow the noise down to just locals.

Thanks!
-John
 

ResQguy

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Dec 19, 2002
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mjohn, I wouldn't pay any attention to how fast the different tones scoll on the screen. I have 8 different tones set for AACoFD, and the 396 nevver misses an alert. I think the only reason is visibly scrolls at that speed is so you know what you are listening to.
 
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