Rockland / Ramapo paging tones over P25

[MordyT]

Hello,
Working with a Unication G5. Last year the county changed their paging / tone outs (see: Ramapo (Rockland Co) EMS Paging) and old tones are no longer valid (see: Rockland County (NY) Fire Tone Outs - The RadioReference Wiki).

I'm assuming there is now some sort of P25 tone outs happening that I can program into the G5, but at a loss on how tone outs work with P25. From other threads I've read, there is a sub groups feature that will work with this, but I can't seem to find info on them for this system.

Any advise would be much appreciated.

 

[studgeman]

If they are actually using Quick Call II Tones and not "Call Alert" its is identical to analog conventional, you would just program your G5 to the correct talkgroup. A county would not normally change the actual tone frequencies due to the way the console is programmed. (Its a lot more work). Fire departments are notoriously parochial about tones and the way they "sound". Without specific knowledge of Rockland, that is where I would start.

 

[murse_joe]

The county is "paging" out over the P25 system but it's just their same old tones. They do sound distorted but they don't alert anything so it doesn't matter much. The whole thing is rebroadcast over VHF so you can set off pagers and IamResponding/eDispatches etc. North Rockland rebroadcasts on the same VHF frequency. Orangetown does on a different VHF frequency, Clarkstown sends their dispatch over that frequency but doesn't rebroadcast their talkgroup.

You're right in that P25 systems can alert by groups and sub groups but none of that is set up in Rockland. The tones over P25 are just a holdover. They sound weird because they're old tones now sent digitally then cast over VHF.

 

[MordyT]

The county is "paging" out over the P25 system but it's just their same old tones. They do sound distorted but they don't alert anything so it doesn't matter much. The whole thing is rebroadcast over VHF so you can set off pagers and IamResponding/eDispatches etc. North Rockland rebroadcasts on the same VHF frequency. Orangetown does on a different VHF frequency, Clarkstown sends their dispatch over that frequency but doesn't rebroadcast their talkgroup.

You're right in that P25 systems can alert by groups and sub groups but none of that is set up in Rockland. The tones over P25 are just a holdover. They sound weird because they're old tones now sent digitally then cast over VHF.

So RC Fire for example rebroadcasts pages over VHF (on 470.800) and tones work to alert stuff like minitor 6's and such. Does the same work for RC EMS but instead of 155.3550 use 155.595 with the same tones? I can program the G5 for this, but if it doesn't, does that mean I can't get a pager to alert on EMS dispatches?

 

[GTR8000]

The county is "paging" out over the P25 system but it's just their same old tones. They do sound distorted but they don't alert anything so it doesn't matter much. The whole thing is rebroadcast over VHF so you can set off pagers and IamResponding/eDispatches etc. North Rockland rebroadcasts on the same VHF frequency. Orangetown does on a different VHF frequency, Clarkstown sends their dispatch over that frequency but doesn't rebroadcast their talkgroup.

You're right in that P25 systems can alert by groups and sub groups but none of that is set up in Rockland. The tones over P25 are just a holdover. They sound weird because they're old tones now sent digitally then cast over VHF.

Uh, most of this is incorrect. There are a ton of APX subscribers and Unication pagers that are being alerted over the trunked system as the primary means of alerting, hence why TG 3000 EMS Paging was created last year for Ramapo and North Rockland (all now dispatched by the county). TG 3000 is simulcast over 155.595, but that is now "County EMS" not just North Rockland EMS, and there are much less radios/pagers getting alerted over analog VHF than there are over the trunked system (mostly some North Rockland holdouts that didn't add Tone Signaling to their APX 7000s in time before they were EOL).

As for the tones "sounding weird", that's because when they are transmitted over the trunked system, they are "normalized" to a specific frequency based on the range of Hz for each grouping. There's a chart showing what each small range of Hz normalizes to for either FDMA (not applicable here) or TDMA (which is what Rockland uses). This doesn't happen over analog, and so the tones are still their pure Hz form over 155.595. And no, the are not "now sent digitally then cast over VHF", that's also incorrect. They are in fact simulcast over TG 3000 and 155.595 directly from the county's consoles with no loss of fidelity. When the dispatcher pages, the system is keying up both the analog GTR base repeater on 155.595 as well as the trunked repeater for the talkgroup; it's not a patch or rebroadcast or whatever.

 

[MordyT]

There are a ton of APX subscribers and Unication pagers that are being alerted over the trunked system as the primary means of alerting, hence why TG 3000 EMS Paging was created last year for Ramapo and North Rocklan

Do you have any further info on this (and how to program it into a G5)?

 

[GTR8000]

The tones in the wiki are correct/up to date. As for programming them into a Unication, should be as simple as setting up the trunked system and adding the tones for either TG 3000 (EMS) or TG 4000 (Fire). I haven't programmed one of those in ages, so I can't give you any specific step by step.