- Joined
- Mar 14, 2014
- Messages
- 6
So recently, with the move over to Schenectady County’s trunk radio system, all of the fire departments in Rotterdam and Duanesburg, with the notable exceptions of Rotterdam District 2, Carman, Quaker Street, and Mariaville, have seemingly regained a separate set of siren tones that seemingly do nothing as they haven’t been used to activate sirens in years. Scotia also regained its siren tones despite not even using a siren in years and barely having any volunteers left. As such, our county’s Fire Tone Outs page needs to be updated. It seems like the “new” siren tones in Rotterdam follow a similar-sounding format, oddly enough, to those of District 2 and Carman. Scotia’s follows the same pattern as the rest of the Glenville departments. None of the tones in Niskayuna changed.
What intrigues me is how the tones in Rotterdam used to sound before about 2000. Prior to this, while frequency-wise they were the same as the pager tones (and only tones before 2023), their timings were different. I know they are all Plectron-based, but instead of using a normal format like 3sec, 3sec/.75sec, or .75sec/.25sec, they used 3sec/3sec. The only other places I have seen this format are Calvert County MD, which still uses this, and Gloucester County NJ, which hasn’t in years. I can’t find anything in any Plectron reference material that would indicate this format was an option. Additionally, this format remained even after all the fire departments in town purchased Motorola pagers in the late 1980s and early 1990s, despite this obviously not being a Motorola format in any sense of the word.
Finally, this is going to be a long shot as these departments have been gone for years, but does anyone have information about the tones Hoffmans and Rectors used in Glenville? Hoffmans shut down in 1993 right before Scotia stopped dispatching the town departments, and Rectors shut down in 1997 a few years after Glenville PD took over. Based on a recording I found from when Scotia still dispatched themselves, their format was different from the current one used, albeit the pager tones were still the same Plectron-based ones in use today, just with different timings.
Here is a video recorded around 2001 showing dispatches from every town in the county, years before the county UCC took over.
What intrigues me is how the tones in Rotterdam used to sound before about 2000. Prior to this, while frequency-wise they were the same as the pager tones (and only tones before 2023), their timings were different. I know they are all Plectron-based, but instead of using a normal format like 3sec, 3sec/.75sec, or .75sec/.25sec, they used 3sec/3sec. The only other places I have seen this format are Calvert County MD, which still uses this, and Gloucester County NJ, which hasn’t in years. I can’t find anything in any Plectron reference material that would indicate this format was an option. Additionally, this format remained even after all the fire departments in town purchased Motorola pagers in the late 1980s and early 1990s, despite this obviously not being a Motorola format in any sense of the word.
Finally, this is going to be a long shot as these departments have been gone for years, but does anyone have information about the tones Hoffmans and Rectors used in Glenville? Hoffmans shut down in 1993 right before Scotia stopped dispatching the town departments, and Rectors shut down in 1997 a few years after Glenville PD took over. Based on a recording I found from when Scotia still dispatched themselves, their format was different from the current one used, albeit the pager tones were still the same Plectron-based ones in use today, just with different timings.
Here is a video recorded around 2001 showing dispatches from every town in the county, years before the county UCC took over.
