Fire Tone Outs

[cuzinit001]

I have been playing with my 436 on the tone out search. Walkerton fire has had 3 pages and the tones were all Freq 153.8600 A 456.8 B 433.1.. Hanover has been paged out 3 times with 3 different tone outs
Freq 153.2150 #1 A 287.9 B 1089.3 #2 A 288.4 B 1091.2 #3 A 288.3 B 1092.1

My question is why do they have 3 tone outs, or because they are close its the same one and the scanner is misreading them
Thanks
Frank

 

[Voyager]

Decode fluctuations. The correct set is 288.5 / 1092.4

Tone decoders will work within at least 0.5% of the tone which for 1000.0 Hz means a decode window of 995.0 Hz to 1005.0 Hz. For 288.5 it would be about 287.5 to 289.5 Hz.

 

[ATCTech]

I'd bet on the scanner not being 'perfect'. They're too close to be different yet belong to the same family. Might also be a tiny bit of drift in the pager system oscillator.

 

[Voyager]

While the oscillator could be slightly off, it's more likely a little bit of noise causing more or fewer zero crossings in the decoder. That's why there is a tolerance. Even the encoder won't always be right on frequency. Now that would be a crystal issue since it's generating tones...

 

[troubleshooter1]

While we are correcting things, the Walkerton tones should be A 457.9 Hz. and B 433.7 Hz.

 

[ATCTech]

I only mentioned the source of the tones since the O/P did not mention any variation in the Walkerton system page frequencies. Merely an observation since we have no way of knowing his relative receive signal quality between the two locations.

 

[Voyager]

Ooops. I missed the Walkerton tones or I would have corrected those, too.

 

[EJB]

I have been playing with my 436 on the tone out search. Walkerton fire has had 3 pages and the tones were all Freq 153.8600 A 456.8 B 433.1.. Hanover has been paged out 3 times with 3 different tone outs
Freq 153.2150 #1 A 287.9 B 1089.3 #2 A 288.4 B 1091.2 #3 A 288.3 B 1092.1

My question is why do they have 3 tone outs, or because they are close its the same one and the scanner is misreading them
Thanks
Frank

Hey Frank: I have a question for you regarding scanning up your way. Please check your PM's.

Thank u

E

 

[IdleMonitor]

What's the best/easiest way to find out what the Tone-Outs are?

I only have a 396T so I don't have any capabilities of finding them. This is one feature that I've never been able to fully utilize in my radio the whole time I've had it.

 

[QDP2012]

What's the best/easiest way to find out what the Tone-Outs are?...

In case you haven't found it yet, Fire Tone Out (FTO) information is often stored in the RR Wiki, since it cannot be stored in the RRDB.

In the RR Wiki, the Category:Ontario Fire Tone Outs page lists the Ontario pages that contain FTO data. Maybe one of them will be useful.

In case you want to find other FTO-related pages, the Category:FTOs page lists all of the geographically-specific sub-categories like the one mentioned above.


Hope it helps,

 

[mikewazowski]

What's the best/easiest way to find out what the Tone-Outs are?

I only have a 396T so I don't have any capabilities of finding them. This is one feature that I've never been able to fully utilize in my radio the whole time I've had it.

Sure you do.

Find an audio spectrum analyzer program and use it to display the tones as they're broadcast.

I use FFT Plot on an iPad to display the tones. A lot of people use Audacity on a PC or Mac.

 

[ATCTech]

Me too, been using a similar technique for years. I also record them as broadcast so they can be sampled multiple times and potentially by multiple detectors.

 

[Forts]

The author of TwoToneDetect has a helper app to identify tones, maybe give it a shot.

http://www.twotonedetect.net/twotonefinder/