is fire toneout what i need?

[ryradio]

My towns fire dispatch is grouped with quite a few other
towns dispatches on the same talkgroup on our p25
simulcast. I just want to be alerted to the one that interests me.

Im nor sure how fire toneouts work but I have a uniden996p2, which has them.... is it possible to filter this somehow?

Since they are grouped together on same talkgroup, im guessing no.

 

[cmjonesinc]

You're not going to be able to use fto on a p25 system. It's for two tone paging which is typically on an analog frequency (commonly vhf or uhf) Depending on what the department's use for paging it's likely still possible. A lot of places use a digital trunked system for all their comms but paging is still on a vhf or uhf analog frequency. If that's the case in your area you just need to know that frequency and tone. If they are using another type of paging and digital talk groups you likely won't be able to single out a department on a talk group.

 

[jonwienke]

If you've got FTO on a P25 system, it's probably also broadcast on an analog frequency. Find the analog frequency that your FD is using to page, and set up FTO on that frequency.

 

[fredva]

Look at this database page, see if you can find the Fire/EMS dispatch frequency that applies to your town, and monitor it in your scanner to see if the tones come across it. If so, use that for your FTO frequency.

Lake County, Indiana (IN) Scanner Frequencies and Radio Frequency Reference

 

[ofd8001]

Also if you click on the FCC license cell, then move on to the actual FCC license page, you'll see a "Frequencies" tab. One of the columns will be headed "Paging Rec." for paging receivers.

If there is a number there, that's a suggestion this frequency might be used for tone and voice alerting.

As noted above, a number of communities with trunked radio systems may use a separate conventional radio frequency for responder alerting. They may patch the TRS talkgroup to that paging frequency.

Once you discover that conventional frequency used for paging, then you can use Fire Tone Out to "filter" as you mentioned. (Of course you'll have to learn the frequencies of the tones being used, which would involve a tone search).

 

[ryradio]

So I figured out my town uses a VHF frequency for the toneout. The bridge is listed as Tone A and Tone B in my counties wiki. I am using a Uniden 996P2 which has toneout.

I am assuming I would set the 996p2 as per the manual. It would add the VHF frequency to my scan. When it hear the tones, then the scanner would jump to the talkgroup on the P25 system that the dispatch is broadcasted on? Or does the dispatch occur on the same VHF channel as the tone?

 

[cmjonesinc]

The dispatch will be on the vhf channel where it's paged.

 

[ofd8001]

With the fire tone out, a scanner will do "normal scanning" or be in "Fire Tone Out", but not both at the same time.

When in normal scanning, the scanner is listening to all active frequencies and doesn't do anything special when tones are broadcast.

In Fire Tone Out, this is like a standby mode for the scanner, functioning similar to a tone and voice pager. The scanner is not "scanning" anything, rather just listening to one frequency. If the scanner hears the programmed alert tones, it will unmute the audio and you will hear what is being said.

The scanner does not do as you mentioned - jump to the P25 system. You'll have to turn the scan function back on if you want to listen to "regular" radio traffic.

 

[ryradio]

That sucks. I was just about to add the frequency and tones to Freescan. I guess I can still do so but it doesn't accomplish what I was after.

I suppose a first responder needing to listen to both PD and FIRE for one municipality only is using a radio instead of a scanner, which would be able to filter the traffic as I hoped to do.

So if I use the toneout like a standbye mode, are all the tones audible each time one is broadcasted or is the scanner silent until the specified tone is played?

 

[ofd8001]

The scanner is silent until the programmed tones are broadcast. Pretty much a big pager.

 

[Eng74]

If you don't need digital for the VHF/UHF tone out, you can get BC15 or the 15XT for a little over $100. Then you can keep 996P2 on the truck system. There is no such thing as having too many scanners.

 

[fredva]

I suppose a first responder needing to listen to both PD and FIRE for one municipality only is using a radio instead of a scanner, which would be able to filter the traffic as I hoped to do.

If somebody is officially associated with both police and fire, then that person may be given separate pagers for PD and fire, or assigned a radio or radios with both police and fire channels.

However, in most places, if a first responder is associated only with the fire department, it is not considered a necessity for that person to have access to police channels. It is the dispatcher's job to let firefighters know what they need to know on fire department channels. Same goes for police officers on police channels.

 

[reedeb]

For many years never used a pager only a scanner listened to fire police rescue and highway I never missed a call. Later I got a pager, still ran a scanner in the house and kept the pager for sleeping. i still woke up before the pager started yelping lol.

 

[ryradio]

What other types of paging systems are typically used? I don't think the department I wanted to monitor is using the vhf system that I thought.

 

[INDY72]

With the fire tone out, a scanner will do "normal scanning" or be in "Fire Tone Out", but not both at the same time.

When in normal scanning, the scanner is listening to all active frequencies and doesn't do anything special when tones are broadcast.

In Fire Tone Out, this is like a standby mode for the scanner, functioning similar to a tone and voice pager. The scanner is not "scanning" anything, rather just listening to one frequency. If the scanner hears the programmed alert tones, it will unmute the audio and you will hear what is being said.

The scanner does not do as you mentioned - jump to the P25 system. You'll have to turn the scan function back on if you want to listen to "regular" radio traffic.

In FTO standbye, the scanner scans ONLY the freqs you assign to the FTO list. Most of the newer FTO scanners can do like 10 freqs, and multiple A/B tones for each freq. But they do NOT scan the regular scan lists in FTO mode. And since your talking about main ops on the TRS... You almost need 2 scanners. One on FTO, one monitoring the TRS. You will know who is being paged by the FTO tones, and aural announcement, then monitor the fireground/ops TG for the response.

 

[deadman1961]

Fire Tones

Does your fire department have different tones for each station and appliance, we in New Zealand use Selcall, which each station has a specific set of tones for turnout, and specific tones for K codes and all the appliances which cuts down on voice traffic.

I have a selcall decoder (circuit board) which decodes the tones,

190320 - Wainoni Station >> text to speech "Wainoni station"
C0051F - Wainoni Pump 321 K1 >> Text to Speech " Wanoni 321 K1"
other tones are decoded such as Informative messages, Priority Messages
once the fire is out and the appliance is free for another call , a tone such as
C50054 is sent and decoded as Wainoni 321 K4
and when on station the tone heard will be
C90051 - Wainoni 321 K7

I use a program called Balabolka to make the station names and other codes

if you look up my feed "Transalpine fire despatch" you can hear the tones and the text to speech commands as each tone sounds