Q.V. W.W. TN. tones

[coolrich55]

Do you guys remember back when the different tones after the pagers opened up? Not sure what you would call them. Few different types. One would be for a fire incident, one for medicals, even ones for mutual aid calls and general announcements. Most have gone away long ago but for the past couple weeks I've heard Q.V. use one for the first time in years. Nothing consistent though but both times I heard it was for the Moosup dept.

 

[Thorndike113]

Its been about 10 years since I listened to that down there but I do remember what you are talking about. I think the common one sounded like a high pitched fast siren, another sounded like a lower pitched slow siren, other ones were two different tones that went back and forth, I think the one for a message was a single tone that beeped a few times? Man, that is something I do not miss. Those dispatches used so many frequencies on multiple bands and multiple towers and all sorts of "end tones" I guess you could put it as. The call had to be dispatched 3-4 times with 10 different call signs. So glad I live where I do. No call signs, one frequency, one tower, and no annoying courtesy tones, ANI tones, end tones, and no fire sirens (house siren) rattling the neighborhood. Have they done away with a lot of that down there? I know QV had most departments dispatched over alpha pagers back when I lived in CT.

 

[nhfdcadet]

Do you guys remember back when the different tones after the pagers opened up? Not sure what you would call them. Few different types. One would be for a fire incident, one for medicals, even ones for mutual aid calls and general announcements. Most have gone away long ago but for the past couple weeks I've heard Q.V. use one for the first time in years. Nothing consistent though but both times I heard it was for the Moosup dept.

Different consoles would make different tones, zetron, motorola, etc.
Northwest Public Safety has one after most paging tones they set off. It is just a fast Hi-Lo tone 800Hz-1500Hz, they used to have a few different ones on the old 5500 console, now they are all the same on the 7500.
Simsbury.
I think WW still has a couple of them. I will keep an ear next time I am working over that way and try to see who it is for.

 

[wa8pyr]

Its been about 10 years since I listened to that down there but I do remember what you are talking about. I think the common one sounded like a high pitched fast siren, another sounded like a lower pitched slow siren, other ones were two different tones that went back and forth, I think the one for a message was a single tone that beeped a few times?

Most pagers would beep several times when they received the tones, usually for a second or so during the B tone. If someone was using an 8-second tone the pager would usually decode and unmute after about 4 seconds, which meant you got 3-4 seconds of the pager beeping madly (quickly followed by someone in the house throwing a shoe or something at the pager).

Most of the fancy post-alert noises (fast siren, slow siren, steady tone and high-low warble) would have been from Plectron tone boxes or Zetron consoles and tone boxes; they appealed to volunteers who were dependent on pagers and liked having a unique noise to tell different call types apart so they knew if they had to go or not.

All I recall Motorola boxes doing was the paging tones and that's it; any post-alert tones came from the dispatch console if there was one.

Up through the Motorola Centracom 1 console all you had was the steady tone, which could also be used as a beep tone by pressing the button repeatedly. The Centracom 2 and later (Gold Elite and MCC series) introduced the pre-set steady, high-low and beep tones. Zetron had a number of unique tones of their own and recreated the Plectron tones as well as the Motorola tones in their consoles and tone boxes; they use them to this day although in the Zetron Max consoles they're just WAV files sampled by the console when the proper "button" on the screen is pressed. They can also be "attached" to an alert pre-program to send a desired noise to a specific agency.

I kind of miss all those neat noises when they go away. I've maintained, dispatched from or been dispatched by all of these consoles and boxes over the many years I've been in this line of work. One of our current fire chiefs really hates the slow siren/warble tone, so I'm tempted to slap that alert on their console pre-program just to make his life a bit more surreal.

Check this page all the way at the bottom for samples of most of the noises these consoles and paging boxes made.

Police Interceptor.Com

 

[coolrich55]

Most pagers would beep several times when they received the tones, usually for a second or so during the B tone. If someone was using an 8-second tone the pager would usually decode and unmute after about 4 seconds, which meant you got 3-4 seconds of the pager beeping madly (quickly followed by someone in the house throwing a shoe or something at the pager).

Most of the fancy post-alert noises (fast siren, slow siren, steady tone and high-low warble) would have been from Plectron tone boxes or Zetron consoles and tone boxes; they appealed to volunteers who were dependent on pagers and liked having a unique noise to tell different call types apart so they knew if they had to go or not.

All I recall Motorola boxes doing was the paging tones and that's it; any post-alert tones came from the dispatch console if there was one.

Up through the Motorola Centracom 1 console all you had was the steady tone, which could also be used as a beep tone by pressing the button repeatedly. The Centracom 2 and later (Gold Elite and MCC series) introduced the pre-set steady, high-low and beep tones. Zetron had a number of unique tones of their own and recreated the Plectron tones as well as the Motorola tones in their consoles and tone boxes; they use them to this day although in the Zetron Max consoles they're just WAV files sampled by the console when the proper "button" on the screen is pressed. They can also be "attached" to an alert pre-program to send a desired noise to a specific agency.

I kind of miss all those neat noises when they go away. I've maintained, dispatched from or been dispatched by all of these consoles and boxes over the many years I've been in this line of work. One of our current fire chiefs really hates the slow siren/warble tone, so I'm tempted to slap that alert on their console pre-program just to make his life a bit more surreal.

Check this page all the way at the bottom for samples of most of the noises these consoles and paging boxes made.

Police Interceptor.Com

Thanks for that very cool link. Those alert tones like the fast and slow warble were very familiar here in eastern CT. I kinda miss those days also. Especially the dispatch centers that all seemed to have their own very unique sounds. Station M Montville comes to mind back in the 33.96 days. The sound they had I can't even describe and was totally unique from what anybody else around here had.

 

[Thorndike113]

Now that you mention it like that, I remember hearing other dispatches that used them but the audio was set much lower so that it didnt sound like you had the siren speaker on a fire truck blasting you in the ear. For me, it was sort of annoying but it was HIGHLY annoying to those near me that had to hear it. I remember having to lower the volume on my scanner every time a call was put out and then having to raise it back up so I could hear dispatch. The volume levels were like night and day. Then, like I said in the previous post, due to the system they had setup that sounded like a patchwork of radios and crossband units layered on top of themselves with all the un-needed ANI noise, I had several times people around me got hostile and almost broke my scanner. The different tones on the end for different calls? Good idea, just too bad they didnt keep the audio level a little lower on those tones at least. Good idea though if you just need to know if you need to go out.