Cal Fire Tone-outs?

[spaceoddity]

Hello, all,
I am new to Radio Reference Forum, so pardon any gaffs I make on where to put this post.
I recently purchased a Uniden SDS-200 and SDS150.

I live in California and am in the process of programming in the Cal Fire (Dept of Forestry) frequencies for my area.
I'd also like to set up the Fire Tone-outs for the various Cal Fire stations in my county (San Luis Obispo).

Does anyone know of any reliable and accurate sources where I can obtain the tone-outs for these stations?
I am not finding them published online, and my suspicion is that Cal Fire is not likely to just give them out to anyone who asks.
I don't know if these tones are 'restricted' info or not, so I'm hoping that they are listed somewhere on the internet.
Perhaps here on RR, or maybe somewhere else (Reddit??).

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

 

[buddrousa]

The Fire Tone Outs do not work in scanners the way they do in Pagers or Commercial Radios.
Tone Outs does not scan it sits on 1 channel waiting on that tone if I remember correctly.
You can have several Tone Outs but you can only pick 1 at a time.

 

[spaceoddity]

Hello,
Yeah, I realize the scanner works differently than a pager would, but I was still hoping to get the tone-outs nevertheless.
Thank you though.

 

[buddrousa]

If you follow the directions the x36's and SDS Scanners will read the tones as it receives them and if you use Proscan it will log them it will just take some work on your part.

 

[Kingscup]

The fire tone out codes are not restricted. Since SLO County is a less populated county and the amount of scanner listeners is likely on the lower side, there are less people that decided to take up this project or just don't care about it.

If you have an iPhone/iPad, you can download an app (99¢)that can decode the fire tone outs. It is called RadioID. Just hold the phone next to the speaker of the scanner and it will give you the codes.
To make getting those tones easier, you can listen to the Broadcastify audio archives for CAL FIRE/SLO County Fire. Click on a time/date and see the audio that has radio traffic. Since you are a premium subscriber, it is free. Just log in to Broadcastify with your Radio Reference credentials.

If you want to make it even faster, download the Pulse Point app (Free). It has current and past calls so if you need to the fire tone out for station 72, look at the last time 72s had a call and then go to that day and time on the Broadcastify archive and you to hear the tone out.

Once you have all that, you can add the fire tone outs to the SLO County wiki page so others can use them for their scanners.

 

[spaceoddity]

If you follow the directions the x36's and SDS Scanners will read the tones as it receives them and if you use Proscan it will log them it will just take some work on your part.

Thanks for the info, However, ProScan doesn't tell me which stations have which tones. Whereas if I can find a list, that would be much faster than waiting for the occasional tone-out to be transmitted.

 

[spaceoddity]

The fire tone out codes are not restricted. Since SLO County is a less populated county and the amount of scanner listeners is likely on the lower side, there are less people that decided to take up this project or just don't care about it.

If you have an iPhone/iPad, you can download an app (99¢)that can decode the fire tone outs. It is called RadioID. Just hold the phone next to the speaker of the scanner and it will give you the codes.
To make getting those tones easier, you can listen to the Broadcastify audio archives for CAL FIRE/SLO County Fire. Click on a time/date and see the audio that has radio traffic. Since you are a premium subscriber, it is free. Just log in to Broadcastify with your Radio Reference credentials.

If you want to make it even faster, download the Pulse Point app (Free). It has current and past calls so if you need to the fire tone out for station 72, look at the last time 72s had a call and then go to that day and time on the Broadcastify archive and you to hear the tone out.

Once you have all that, you can add the fire tone outs to the SLO County wiki page so others can use them for their scanners.

Thank you very much for this info. I appreciate it.

 

[AM909]

https://wiki.radioreference.com/images/9/97/CalFire_SLU_Alert_Tones.pdf

 

[KK6ZTE]

https://wiki.radioreference.com/images/9/97/CalFire_SLU_Alert_Tones.pdf

This is out of date.

@spaceoddity, is there any specific tone you're looking for?

 

[spaceoddity]

This is out of date.

@spaceoddity, is there any specific tone you're looking for?

Actually, I'm also trying to get the tones for Atascadero Fire Dept. There are two stations here, but not really part of the Cal-Fire system. They have a different dispatch frequency (154.37) than what the Cal Fire stations use for my area. But thank you for that list.

 

[Eng74]

You can decode the tones with the scanner. Set both A and B tones to 0.0, set the the time to infinite so the tones will stay on the screen. It can take some time and a lot of waiting.

 

[spaceoddity]

You can decode the tones with the scanner. Set both A and B tones to 0.0, set the the time to infinite so the tones will stay on the screen. It can take some time and a lot of waiting.

 

[spaceoddity]

Ok, thank you.

 

[clovisb31]

You can decode the tones with the scanner. Set both A and B tones to 0.0, set the the time to infinite so the tones will stay on the screen. It can take some time and a lot of waiting.

I'm attempting this same procedure for Fresno County. You have to sit by the scanner, wait for the tone out, listen for the Station number, then note the two tones displayed. The tones displayed on my Uniden 996p2 are NOT accurate when compared to the Motorola Quick call tone list. They can vary in accuracy and you need to look up the tone on the Motorola list that is closest to what the scanner displays. It's a time consuming endeavor.

 

[spaceoddity]

I'm attempting this same procedure for Fresno County. You have to sit by the scanner, wait for the tone out, listen for the Station number, then note the two tones displayed. The tones displayed on my Uniden 996p2 are NOT accurate when compared to the Motorola Quick call tone list. They can vary in accuracy and you need to look up the tone on the Motorola list that is closest to what the scanner displays. It's a time consuming endeavor.

One thing I'm thinking of doing is getting out an old portable cassette player I have that can be 'vox' activated to record. Then I can just go back and get the tones and hopefully run them through audacity or something to see what the tones are and which stations they correspond with.

 

[bc780l]

Try: ComTekk Multi Tone Decoder
Works well. Have used for years.

 

[spaceoddity]

Try: ComTekk Multi Tone Decoder
Works well. Have used for years.

Ok, wonderful. Thanks for the info.

 

[spaceoddity]

You can decode the tones with the scanner. Set both A and B tones to 0.0, set the the time to infinite so the tones will stay on the screen. It can take some time and a lot of waiting.

Yes, I can, but I was hoping to just speed up the process by getting a list of the codes to just program them in without waiting indefinitely for whatever stations I want the tones for.

 

[spaceoddity]

The fire tone out codes are not restricted. Since SLO County is a less populated county and the amount of scanner listeners is likely on the lower side, there are less people that decided to take up this project or just don't care about it.

If you have an iPhone/iPad, you can download an app (99¢)that can decode the fire tone outs. It is called RadioID. Just hold the phone next to the speaker of the scanner and it will give you the codes.
To make getting those tones easier, you can listen to the Broadcastify audio archives for CAL FIRE/SLO County Fire. Click on a time/date and see the audio that has radio traffic. Since you are a premium subscriber, it is free. Just log in to Broadcastify with your Radio Reference credentials.

If you want to make it even faster, download the Pulse Point app (Free). It has current and past calls so if you need to the fire tone out for station 72, look at the last time 72s had a call and then go to that day and time on the Broadcastify archive and you to hear the tone out.

Once you have all that, you can add the fire tone outs to the SLO County wiki page so others can use them for their scanners.

Thanks for the info. I did contact the local administrative office for the city's fire dept. Even though the tones are 'not restricted,' they still wouldn't give them to me stating that they are 'internal' codes they do not release to the public.
I was half tempted to respond by telling the person that my scanner will eventually display the codes anyway, but I decided not to cause
any issues.

 

[NorCalrescue]

Thanks for the info. I did contact the local administrative office for the city's fire dept. Even though the tones are 'not restricted,' they still wouldn't give them to me stating that they are 'internal' codes they do not release to the public.
I was half tempted to respond by telling the person that my scanner will eventually display the codes anyway, but I decided not to cause
any issues.

This was the right call by the agency. Given the correct radio configuration and proper tones, a person could easily tone-out fire stations. Therefore the decode frequencies should be considered controlled/unclassified information.