Need some help and education on receiving pages with G4

[peten1vak]

Just started using G4. I've had no trouble programming except for paging. Do I need to know the tones that my fire department uses to set up the pager function? I'm thinking I need to know the talk group and the tones that they get paged out on but I could be wrong. If so how do I get these talk groups and tones? I have the PPS 4.0 software and I'm not seeing anything really clear on YouTube.

Here's the scenario:

I'm monitoring 700 MHz p25 P2 simulcast system for County Fire Department in Pitt County North Carolina. I have the fire dispatch talk group in and when a call comes in There are two tones that come over the air and then the dispatcher dispatches to a station. There are many stations in this county. I am just trying to get the pager to go off when one station is dispatched. I do not know what the difference is between select call and quick call 2 so I'm pretty green. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Thanks

pete

 

[hazrat8990]

QCII is just what the 2-Tone protocol is called, and selective call is the binding feature that needs to be set up for the pager to be silent until a specific tone is sent out. In order for the pager to go off for only one specific department, the tone pair has to be programmed in. Luckily, these pagers have a tone detect feature, so the tone doesn't need to be 100% perfect for it to work. If you have a scanner that logs tones, you could use it to get the tone frequencies, or you could use some kind of tone generating/decoding software online. You could also call the dispatch office and ask.

Once you are able to get the tones, you'll need to add them to the sub group list. After you have the sub group set up, you'll be able to set up a channel knob with the sub group feature enabled. Hopefully, this example will get you in the ballpark.

 

[hazrat8990]

For a paging channel to work best, it should only have one TG. Also, where your system is phase 2, you'll have to set your tones in both boxes circled in the second pic. The sample I sent is of a phase 1 system, but all other setup will be the same.

Hope it helps!

 

[peten1vak]

Thank you so much for that explanation.

 

[hazrat8990]

Forgot to add the most important part about enabling tone detect. If you get in a bind, you can message me anytime.

 

[peten1vak]

The county I'm in the p25 p2 Simulcast system for fire - it seems like they broadcast 1 two tone set and then they dispatch whatever station they want. I don't believe this tone is linked to any specific station which I don't understand? When EMS gets dispatched there's no tone the dispatcher just gets on and says something like station 54 respond, or station 34 respond. Is this common to these type of systems?

 

[hazrat8990]

They may have something that goes out via text message for EMS. Also, it's quite possible that all of the fire pagers get alerted at the same time with only one tone pair. It may be done this way to be a test page of sorts for the stations that are still on standby.

 

[peten1vak]

Thanks again!!

 

[peten1vak]

I believe I've got the programming down. Another question I have is this this is a county system and about 20 town fire departments are dispatched on the fire dispatch talk group. If I program the pager to come on when it decodes let's say tones for station 1 am I right in thinking that I will hear nothing of the other departments other than just that one station when the tone goes off only?

 

[hazrat8990]

I'm assuming that each station would have it's own set of tones, but the way you described earlier made it seem like all use the same tone pair. If they are individual tones, it will only alert for the ones that are within the range of what's programmed.

My county's EMS uses 746.8Hz / 600.9Hz and fire uses 553.8Hz / 584.8Hz tones. They are very different, but the B tone for each fall into the same range on the PPS settings of 578.2-609.3Hz. Only the A tones are different enough for them to be able to alert independent of each other. That said, if any of the 20 stations have similar enough tones, the pager will alert whenever tones that fall into the range that's programmed when the binding feature is set to alert on a sub-group and reset mode is one of the selective options.

 

[hazrat8990]

If you check the box to enable alternatives, you will hear everything on that TG, in addition to the special alert sounds and colors you set up.

 

[peten1vak]

I wanna thank everybody for their help I appreciate it. This software is proving to be very difficult for me. Another issue I've encountered is I've added a talk group then everything seems to be set up correct but when there is a transmission down that talk group nothing is heard? I listen with another scanner and I can hear traffic on that talk group. Can you guys give me some ideas what might be checked or not checked in this program that would allow something like this to happen?

 

[hazrat8990]

Export your profile, add it to a .zip file and post it here, or send me a message if you wish. I'll take a look and see if anything looks off. Let me know exactly what you're wanting it to do, and I'll see if I can help out.

 

[peten1vak]

Hopefully I added the zip file correctly. Under station 34 paging I am trying to get the page to work for the data I have entered. Also in the Viper and NCHP I cannot get any traffic to come on troop A?

 

[hazrat8990]

I did see why you weren't receiving any traffic and corrected it. In order for anything to be heard, the alert mode must be set to 'Tone' Also, I changed the alert tone from 'Default Tone' to 'None' since it would drive you crazy otherwise.

I duplicated what you have into another zone so you can experiment with different settings and switch between them without needing to reprogram. This helped me a great deal while trying to get mine dialed in. Once you get it figured out, just delete the zone. I did make a change to include an alert for the station while you're monitoring county fire, and also changed the reset mode on the paging channel on this new zone. Try it out, and if it works better, you can copy and paste, or move channels around individually.

 

[peten1vak]

Thank you so much I really appreciate your help. When first starting out with the software like me it can be frustrating I'm getting there but slowly. I'm at work right now but can't wait to get home and get back to it once again thank you!

 

[hazrat8990]

One thing you may want to do is to turn off the voice buffering. I'm sure you noticed quite a delay between the pager and scanner that is rather annoying. With the buffering off, there's still a slight delay of maybe 100ms, but it's a lot more pleasant than before.

 

[hazrat8990]

Thank you so much I really appreciate your help. When first starting out with the software like me it can be frustrating I'm getting there but slowly. I'm at work right now but can't wait to get home and get back to it once again thank you!

Frustrating indeed... I've had my G5 since 2017, and still mess up sometimes. Actually, I'm quite surprised it still works considering that I've almost programmed the poor thing to death!