Monday night test tones in LV KS

[SCPD]

The City & County of Leavenworth, Ks hold a test tone every Monday night With their test tones,
the Leavenworth City Fire have their test tone first, then the County. What is confusing is when LV city Fire does it first with One test tone, That one test tone holds the air open for about 20 seconds with NO tones after words.
Why is this ? Thanks for the time, jbxfire

 

[firefive76]

The City & County of Leavenworth, Ks hold a test tone every Monday night With their test tones,
the Leavenworth City Fire have their test tone first, then the County. What is confusing is when LV city Fire does it first with One test tone, That one test tone holds the air open for about 20 seconds with NO tones after words.
Why is this ? Thanks for the time, jbxfire

What frequency are you hearing it come over?

 

[SCPD]

LV KS test tones, heard on frequency 460.2500 conventional. They are not Digital yet.

 

[KAA951]

There are a number of different signaling formats out there for firefighter and fire station alerting.

The most widely used alerting method for volunteer and combination fire departments is two-tone sequential signaling. Two-tone sequential, also known as 1+1, is a selective calling method originally used in one-way, tone-and-voice paging receivers. Many companies have their own names for two-tone sequential options. General Electric Mobile Radio called it Type 99. Motorola called it Quik-Call II. For example, the encoder sends a single tone followed by 50 to 1,000 milliseconds of silence and then a second tone.

Here is great site that looks at some of the "old" tones and contains a number of audio files- most of these were the old 2 + 2 format made popular by "Emergency".

Police Interceptor.Com

There are other formats- such as the one used to alert fire stations in Topeka... Which are quick data bursts from a Zetron sent by the dispatch center which turn on lights in the station, open speakers for a voice alert and then the station alarm panel sends a signal back to the dispatcher acknowledging that the alarm was received. Example of this 1200 baud signal in the link below-

http://www.kb9ukd.com/digital/zetron.wav

Some systems even use DTMF- In DTMF selective calling, the radio is alerted by a string of digits. Systems typically use 2- to 7-digits. These can be dialed from a traditional telephone dial connected to a radio or may be generated as a string of DTMF digits by an automatic encoder. In some systems, a dispatching computer is connected to a DTMF encoder via a serial (RS-232) cable: the computer sends commands to the encoder that generates a pre-defined digit string that is then sent to the transmitter.

The amount of "hang time" after a page is something that is programmed into the paging console. On Shawnee County's system, if the dispatcher's finger slips off the transmit button the page is cleared and they have to set the tones off, again, and start over!

 

[SCPD]

Thanks , that explains a lot. jbxfire

 

[RBMTS]

The City & County of Leavenworth, Ks hold a test tone every Monday night With their test tones,
the Leavenworth City Fire have their test tone first, then the County. What is confusing is when LV city Fire does it first with One test tone, That one test tone holds the air open for about 20 seconds with NO tones after words.
Why is this ? Thanks for the time, jbxfire

How long is the single tone you are talking about? If it is a 5 second tone (approx) then it is probably a "Long Tone". Some departments use us a single long tone as an "department all call" for pagers. The hang time might be the system keeping the air open for what would be the actual voice dispatch.

The other consideration is that if it is a shorter single tone, then it might be just an alert tone to bring attention to a pending dispatch. The actual station alerting is probably then done by wire line or IP via a CAD dispatch system.

 

[SCPD]

L V KS Test Tones

LV KS FD has a 1 = 7 multi test tone for the Monday night test tone, it will last for about 20 seconds with the HANG time , Thanks for the time,
jbxfire

 

[RBMTS]

I don't know what you mean by a "1=7 multi test tone". From your original post I believe you are stating that you hear a single tone, no second tone, and then a hang time of about 20 seconds, correct? For the single tone you are hearing and trying to figure out, how long is just that single tone portion (without the hang time) ?

While I have you let me ask you another question. Are you listening to the evening test on the KSICS trunking system or are you listening to the LV conventional channel of 460.250 ? If the answer is that you are listening to KSICS trunking system, paging is not done through the trunking system. The test is probably being simulcasted over the UHF and the trunked 800 system. The dead air time on the trunked system is the delay to allow the traditional tone system to complete on the other simulcasted frequency (I'm guessing on the 460.250 frequency).

 

[SCPD]

LV KS FD test tone

LV KS FD is NOT digital, they are conventional. There is a TOTAL of 7 different tones one after the other to make up 1 combination tone for what is considered a General Alarm for all Stations. They use this tone for the Monday night test tone. After the test tone has Stopped , there is a HANG TIME of about 20 seconds where the air is still open ,so I was told.

 

[RBMTS]

I have never heard of that format but stranger things have happened I suppose. I have a feeling that what is "7 tones" to you may actually be combination sets of tones (two-tone and single tones) to page out stations or units (station all call, battalion chief, etc.). Would you be able to make a recording of what is paged out on Monday night and then post it up here? Or if it would be more convenient, PM me the file (.wav or mp3) and I'll determine what you have and decode it for you.

PS - the reason I mentioned the KSICS trunking system is that I noticed the LVFD had some TG's on that system. So I assumed that the primary operations occurred on the trunking system. My bad is that is not the case.

 

[NR0W]

in ottawa co the EMS gets dispatched with fire so we 3 sets of 2 tone paging one 1 set for fire , 1 set for EMS and 1 set for the the fire siren. they can do a all call that sets off all the pagers for the differ fire dist and ems in the county. they call it a stack page when they combine the single 2 tone page into a stack of several. Saline county has one for severe weather i think it contains all the fire dist (7) the rural city fire departments ( 2) i think , emergency management , city of salina fd , ems , storm spotters and i think emergency alert receivers at several business , its about a 30 second page followed by the announcement. just wondering how many towns still use a fire siren and have a noon siren or maybe even a evening one? just a bit of other info the the single tone you hear is a combination of 2 tones to make one.

 

[SCPD]

test tones

I see no one understands what I am talking about the test tones for my city Fire Dept, YOU have to hear the test tones to UNDERSTAND what I am talking about. Sorry for all the Confusion.

 

[firefive76]

I see no one understands what I am talking about the test tones for my city Fire Dept, YOU have to hear the test tones to UNDERSTAND what I am talking about. Sorry for all the Confusion.

So record them and post them.