Difficulty decoding cap codes for FD toneouts. Are they something else?

[cquinn3]

[Here] is a list of fire departments in Orange County, NY and their paging tones. They use Quick Call II. I've taken recordings of toneouts and used Audacity to confirm that these frequencies are still accurate.

I have some documents from the dispatch center which look like this:



There is a document like this for each department. Each document lists a three digit "Alarm Call" and a four digit "Home Alert," which I assume are cap codes. I tried decoding them with [this guide] to see if they matched the frequencies listed above, but I was having some issues.

I tried decoding the "Alarm Call" with the "General Encoding Method (3 Digit Cap Code)," but the tones I got don't match the listed tones above.

I'm not sure what method to use to decode the "Home Alerts." The "Metro-Page/Centracom System Method" is the only listed method which produces 4-digit numeric cap codes, but it doesn't seem to be the correct method. Coldenham FD, for instance, has a Home Alert of 5395, but [this table] seems to suggest that a cap code can't start with 53.

Here are some more departments along with their Alarm Calls, Home Alerts and paging tones.

Department	Alarm Call	Home Alert	[Siren] A Tone	[Siren] B Tone	[Pager] A Tone	[Pager] B Tone	[Pager] C Tone
Bullville	679	4427	532.5	697.5	1530	1743	1036
Campbell Hall	453	1207	907.5	817.5	524.6	953.7	1082
Chester	407	5106	667.5	532.5	1930.2	726.8	977
Circleville	230	5301	832.5	652.5	1930.2	1122.5	1326
Coldenham	217	5395	607.5	517.5	2688	1232	1130
Cornwall-on-Hudson	294	2365	667.5	562.5	950	1232	1130
Cronomer Valley	496	2494	622.5	952.5	1036	1598	1743
Cuddebackville	421	1336	772.5	712.5	643	1287	1430
Florida	203	1210	652.5	832.5	589.7	799	732
Fort Montgomery	416	1325	712.5	952.5	615.8	1232	1598
Goodwill	447	1390	862.5	532.5	799	1082	1232
Goshen	628	2410	772.5	562.5	810.2	1433.4	1669
New Windsor	440	1150	862.5	667.5	707.3	524.6	646

Am I just decoding the cap codes incorrectly? Are they even cap codes or are they something else?

 

[cquinn3]

The dispatch center uses the Motorola MCC7500 dispatch console if that's of any significance

 

[buddrousa]

https://www.sigidwiki.com/images/f/f3/Tone-signaling-charts.pdf

 

[dave3825]

I have always used Pano tuner ( Android and Apple ) and matched up to closest on the chart @buddrousa posted.

What are you actually trying to do? Validate the info in the Wiki or program a scanner or pager? I also never saw C tones before but all I have is Uniden scanners that only allow entry of A/B tones.

 

[DaveNF2G]

It seems possible that the dispatch center's designations for paging are the codes to be entered into their console to access the various tone combinations and have no numerical relationship to the audio frequencies of the tones.

When I dispatched for Monroe County, we entered 4-digit codes into a keypad that were mnemonically related to the agencies' numeric designators and the particular response being requested. For example, a code like 4511 would be 4th Battalion 5th Department (Gates) fire call. The actual tones sent were a combination of QCI and QCII, plus a few Plectron, at the time.

 

[cquinn3]

What are you actually trying to do? Validate the info in the Wiki or program a scanner or pager?

I’m mostly just curious about the meaning of the Alarm Call and Home Alert. If they’re not cap codes then I wanted to see if anybody had any ideas of what they could mean.

If they are cap codes then I’d like to find out what encoding method / tone set is being used. Again, part of it is just curiosity, but I’d also like to see if I could use it to verify the exact tones on the wiki.

I also never saw C tones before but all I have is Uniden scanners that only allow entry of A/B tones.

All department pagers are set off by the A/B tones and chiefs’ pagers are set off by the A/C tones. I don't know why the wiki calls it a C tone. I guess it would make sense to organize the list like this:

	A Tone	B Tone
Bullville Page	1530	1743
Bullville Chief Page	1530	1036
Bullville Siren	532.5	697.5
Cambell Hall Page	524.6	953.7
Cambell Hall Chief Page	524.6	1082
...	...	...

 

[dave3825]

By me everything is a/b tones including chiefs.

 

[cquinn3]

https://www.sigidwiki.com/images/f/f3/Tone-signaling-charts.pdf

Thanks a lot! Looks like “Alarm Call” is the GE 99 encoding of the siren tones.

The pager tones look like Plectron format tones. I’m still trying to figure out how to get the tone values from the “Home Alert” code (assuming that they’re related and Home Alert doesn’t mean something else).

The bottom of the Plectron Format Tones table says “Plectron does not employ code groups - Random selection only.” Does this mean there aren’t standard cap codes for Plectron tones and that they’re randomly mapped in the console like @DaveNF2G suggested?

I also found this table. Could it be part of the encoding somehow?

 

[buddrousa]

Back in the day I programmed A B C D tones with D being a long tone for all call Motorola Group 4 tone 0 tone 0 made a long tone.

 

[k2hz]

Going way back, I believe Motorola radios that supported QCII allowed you to program A, B and C tones. The radio could then be programed to respond to both A/B and A/C and either or both B and C could be "long tones". C was commonly used if the "long tone" was not the same as the B tone.

 

[Dave520]

There is an old phone app called Radio ID that I use sometimes. Just hold it up to the speaker on your computer and it will show most paging tones. Just realize that this app has not been updated in many years but still does what it originally was designed to do.
Thanks,
Dave

 

[GTR8000]

It seems possible that the dispatch center's designations for paging are the codes to be entered into their console to access the various tone combinations and have no numerical relationship to the audio frequencies of the tones.

When I dispatched for Monroe County, we entered 4-digit codes into a keypad that were mnemonically related to the agencies' numeric designators and the particular response being requested. For example, a code like 4511 would be 4th Battalion 5th Department (Gates) fire call. The actual tones sent were a combination of QCI and QCII, plus a few Plectron, at the time.

Orange County hasn't manually entered paging codes for decades. Everything is hard-coded into the consoles and has been for decades. This is especially true since 2019 when the new consoles and ASTRO 25 core came online.

 

[GTR8000]

I have some documents from the dispatch center which look like this:

Orange County hasn't paged from single towers in a number of years. When the ASTRO 25 core came online in 2019, FD and EMS paging was converted over to simulcast for each.

 

[GTR8000]

Going way back, I believe Motorola radios that supported QCII allowed you to program A, B and C tones. The radio could then be programed to respond to both A/B and A/C and either or both B and C could be "long tones". C was commonly used if the "long tone" was not the same as the B tone.

Correct. Motorola still refers to it as A/B/C/D tones, which correspond to a "slot" for each tone. Way back in the day these were physical slots on Minitor pagers for the tone reeds/filters, literally labeled A, B, and C (D came along later but wasn't an option on early series Minitor I and II pagers). There were various formats that you could achieve with the use of jumpers or later on software settings. A-B/A-C were most common, you could also have a Long B or Long C tone, or a less common A-B/C-B setup. Once all of the pagers and radios were synthesized, the "slot" names became more or less moot, but the terminology was retained. Even the very latest APX series still refers to A, B, C, D for QCII paging.