Hilton head island

[doctorbubba010]

FIRE TONE OUT! My dad was apart of the volunteer fire department in the 90s on the island and I am curious to find the fire tone outs of the area. I want to find out if they are the same or changed with time. He was MEDIC 1. I cant find find this info online. thank you

Hilton Head island, Beaufort County, South Carolina. Scanner

 

[INDY72]

Palmetto 800 Is used exclusively now. There is no longer any conventional tone out done for HHI. https://www.radioreference.com/apps/db/?ctid=2319

 

[doctorbubba010]

IS it just lost? or do you think I could call the department?

 

[INDY72]

Not lost just no longer used. HHI dos NOT use VHF at all any longer. They use the Statewide 800 MHz P25 Trunked Radio System for all communications. As far as I know, the whole County has discontinued VHF. Charleston County also no longer tones on VHF, Dorchester I believe has also discontinued VHF tone out. Berkeley may still have VHF Tone Out.... Colleton I am unsure on, but most likely also no longer tone out on VHF. Jasper is probably in the same boat.

Are you trying to find historical data? Now that.. That is another kettle of fish entirely, and you will be VERY lucky to find a listing anywhere of the QuickCall tones from the 90's.

 

[doctorbubba010]

Where do you recommend I look. It is kinda a historical data kind of find. I want to know what my dad herd while dispatched.

 

[brian]

HHI Fire/Rescue uses a different method than traditional Tone-out for station alerting. I don't know exactly what system they use, but it's a digital system that does not use voice. If you tune to 453.075, you'll hear the data being transmitted from time to time. I have heard a more traditional tone-out and voice on this frequency for Daufuski Island, but only as a test. I believe they test on Monday evenings, but I'm not positive about that. I don't spend a lot of time there, and mostly on weekends. I have only caught that tone-out test once.

The dispatcher will announce calls via voice on the primary dispatch talkgroup (550) on Palmetto 800. This is only heard on the Beaufort County simulcast site (Site 1-63). I believe this announcement is typically preceded by a tone, but it's just a generic alert tone, not something unique to each station or unit being dispatched.

Hope that helps.

Brian

 

[INDY72]

Where do you recommend I look. It is kinda a historical data kind of find. I want to know what my dad herd while dispatched.

There is nowhere to look. That kind of dispatching has long ago been discontinued in Hilton Head. But in places that do use QC, QC II, etc tone out.. The person would hear an assigned set of tones, in 1 + 1, 1 + 2, 2 + 2, or similar format, the tones varying in Hz, followed by voice announcement of the call out. Those usually were saved in the pager until the memory was full, then they were overwritten as new pages arrived. As this no longer is used there, and all that equipment has long ago been replaced you will not find any pagers with calls saved. And being that this is 2018, and your talking about tone outs from the 1990s era.... Those are not even going to be in the station or even BC EOC recordings as no one saves calls that long. Sorry but seriously, your out of luck.

 

[qball]

Dr Bubba,

I was on the department in the early 90s too. I think that I have driven that truck in the pics along with a bunch of others. Technically, the FDs were not volunteer...the rescue squad was and it was absorbed into the paid fire departments. There were two FDs: Sea Pines Forest Beach and Hilton Head Island. They merged and brought in the rescue squad to be HHI Fire and Rescue.

Before Beaufort County put in the 800MHz Motorola SmartNet trunked system in the late 80s/early 90s, All public service districts, rescue, and fire was dispatched on 154.145MHz from a tower at SPFB Station 1 in Shipyard Plantation. The call sign is/was KUJ732. I have no idea about the tone frequencies for the pagers as I never carried one. As for recordings of the radio audio, dispatch may have something from back then but not likely.

I hope that this helps.

Q

 

[qball]

Where do you recommend I look. It is kinda a historical data kind of find. I want to know what my dad herd while dispatched.

Also, Savannah Communications used to (and still does) maintain the radio systems. If you are looking for the tone frequencies, they may have a record of it but they wouldn't have the audio.

 

[doctorbubba010]

what else do you know?

I believe you are right. He told me he was a LT. in HHI Fire and Rescue. He always told me he was mostly worked with the crash wagons. Do you have any more information about the rescue squad?
I will contact dispatch and see if they have them.

 

[Spec]

Beaufort County simulcasts their Palm 800 FD dispatch on 154.355 still EXCEPT HHI FD. HHI has their own talk groups and TAC channels on the 800 system. HHI dispatch assigns a TAC channel on all dispatch s.

 

[doctorbubba010]

So you are saying that HHI is practically there own entity? They still run on 800 though. Does that mean Hilton head has there own consolidated dispatch?


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[Spec]

So you are saying that HHI is practically there own entity? They still run on 800 though. Does that mean Hilton head has there own consolidated dispatch?


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Pretty much. They have their own PSAP. FD and EMS are now all one.

 

[doctorbubba010]

Looks like a 70's/80's era Type II Wheeled Coach Ford. I was assigned to one for two years, always beat out those Horton Dodge rattletraps. I don't even think Horton makes Type II's anymore.

Where did you work out of?


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[doctorbubba010]

So far I have been able to locate these documents to help point me in the right direction

 

[4909]

Beaufort County does dispatch on the old conventional frequency. But that is about all you will hear, as for some moronic reason, they believe that encryption of EVERYthing, including EMS and fire channels, is the way to go. This is about the only county in the area that does that across the board. Even if you get a trunker, you won't hear much.