I'm trying to figure out how to program my radio for 2-tone. I'm new at this so bare with me. I have 127 channels programmed. Channel 1 is our dispatch channel however i would like to add a channel named "greenhorn fire page" that would normally stay silent until our tones were toned out for a call specific to our district. I have a list that says Tone 1= 422.1 and Tone 2= 445.7 What do I need to do exactly to make this work? There are so many options to click on that I'm not really sure which ones to select (i.e. optional signaling [?], transpond [?], busy channel lockout [?]) all of which I'm clueless about their use. Any help would be very much appreciated, thank you.
Coincidentally I'm needing to do something very similar. I want to have a P25 Trunking channel receive a 2-tone page and alert when that happens.
For you, tyson, what you need to do is go to the "2-tone" page that matches your programming (either "2-tone (Analog)" or "2-tone (Digital)"), and set up "Decode(2-tone 1)" with your desired tones.
Set "Call Format" to "A-B", "Transpond" to "No", and "Alert Tone" and "Alert LED Color" to whatever you wish. (I made mine "1" and "Red" respectively.)
Below that grid, you will see "A Tone (Hz)" and "B Tone (Hz)". This is where you enter 422.1 in the A Tone box and 445.7 in the B Tone box.
From there, go back to the menu on the left side and pick Zone/Channel, then select the correct zone, and click "Channel Edit". Use the up and down arrow icons to choose the right Channel Number, then look down to "Optional Signaling for Group Call" and change that to "2-tone 1".
That should get you to the point where if you send your tones across that channel, the radio should alert.
If you want the channel to stay totally silent until the tones go off, I think it gets a little more complicated. I have been searching for the same thing myself, and I think I just found it, but I haven't tested it yet.
In the menu "Personal" (from the left side menu tree), choose the system you want to edit, and go to "Personal Features". From here, things look different depending if you're using trunked or conventional, digital or analog.
If you are using analog conventional, look in Personal Features at the Analog tab (second one down). In there you will see "Optional Signaling Decode Condition" and "Audio Control (Analog)". The first one, I believe, just says whether the radio needs sub-audible tone (CTCSS/PL, or in Kenwood terms QT) before it will try to decode 2-tone. If you set it to "Carrier", it will look for your 2-tone even if your sub-audible tone isn't present.
The second one is the one I think we both need. For Analog, I see three options: "QT/DQT", "QT/DQT and Optional Signaling", and "QT/DQT or Optional Signaling". The first one means, open the channel if subaudible tone is present. The second one means ONLY open the channel if both subaudible tone AND 2-tone is present. The third one means open the channel if EITHER subaudible tone OR 2-tone is present. In order to make the channel totally silent until tones go off, you want the middle option (AND).
NOTE - this appears to apply to ALL channels in this system, so you may want to create a duplicate of your existing setup - leave your existing setup as is - and make the duplicate have "QT/DQT AND Optional Signaling", and assign the duplicate to the alerting channel.
For Trunking, it appears to be similar, except the only option is "Audio Control for Group Call", and the options are "Talkgroup ID" or "Talkgroup ID and Optional Signaling".
I'm going to try to set my radio up and page using that option now. I'll come back later and say how it goes.
