San Diego County / Amateur Radio ARES tone(s) not working?

[TeeJayZee]

Sorry, I didn't know where to post this... I just wanted to report this issue...

Yesterday I tried to listen to the following frequency in order to listen to their NET they do every Thursday evening -- their schedule can be found here: Nets |

449.440

444.400

K6RRR

RM

107.2 PL

107.2 PL

K6RRR 449.40

ARES, REACT, CERT Primary - Otay Mountain - All Star link to Palomar Mt and Downtown San Diego

FM

Ham

I couldn't hear it, as matter of fact I've never been able to hear them on my scanner (when I added this list found here on the RRDB: Subcategory: Amateur Radio/ARES/RACES/Skywarn (San Diego County) ), so what I did was see if perhaps the tone was correct (I've encountered this issue in the past with other sites). When I removed the tone from my scanner and set it to Search, it started to pickup the signal but no tone was being displayed.

So I don't know if this is a problem where either the RRDB database is incorrect about their tone for that frequency or something else is going on with ARES broadcasts? Hopefully this report may reach to whomever it may concern.

I later plan to also test the other frequencies found on that list for ARES to see if those other tones are the problem as to why I never pick up anything up from them -- my location is near Downtown San Diego (south from downtown) and I pick up Mt. Otay good. Palomar Mt. is a bit too far from me, so it's always a bit sketchy on my scanners (i.e. Uniden BCD325P2 / SDS100 and also Radioddity GM-30).

I hope this helps someone...

 

[TeeJayZee]

Okay, same issue with this one:

147.060

147.660

K6RRR

RM

107.2 PL

107.2 PL

K6RRR 147.06

Downtown San Diego (AllStar link to Otay and Palomar)

FM

Ham

Remove the tone (107.2) and you'll be able to listen to the frequency.

 

[hill]

Repeaters are likely working ok.

As I discussed on another thread on this site that some ham repeaters don't transmit a tone. Users just need thr correct PL tone on the input frequency to access the repeaters.

Nothing wrong with just using carrier squelch (CSQ) for receiving. PL helps if two repeaters close, so only receive one.

If the repeaters truly don't transmit a tone, then you can submit a change to this database to output is CSQ. This will help people that program from the database.

 

[TeeJayZee]

I found another one that we need to delete the tone in order to hear the transmission:

448.780

443.780

K6JCC

RM

131.8 PL

RACES SDGTAC2

RACES "GOLD" Repeater

FM

Ham

I hope someone with more experience into scanning these frequencies can confirm this, so we can submit this info later for the RRDB to be updated.

FYI: I'm simply leaving my scanner running on those frequencies with Proscan to see if it logs / records anything. You see, for months, I wasn't getting anything from them, until I read online that those groups did have transmissions and nets running on a weekly basis -- hence how I then started to do my little investigation -- as to why I wasn't hearing anything...

Maybe at some point those tones on the output were working for these transmissions, but for some reason they are no longer operational, and well, if you import the RRDB via online (i.e. Proscan) or via Sentinel (i.e SDS100) -- that list of frequencies will be silent until we manually remove the tones for them. -- I wonder at this point how many more sites are on the RRDB have this same issue?

 

[k6cpo]

From your posts, I assume you're just listening, correct? The tones are really only necessary when actually transmitting to the repeater. In most case you would only need a tone on your transmit and not on your receive.

I'm also in San Diego and I listen to these frequencies daily.

 

[inigo88]

Feel free to make a database submission once you confirm what’s going on. I’d recommend listening with a scanner in CTCSS/PL search mode to see if a tone is present on the repeater output.

If there’s no tone present then it should be listed as Rx CSQ. If the repeater is just passing the input tone on the output (usually indicated by multiple tones, not really applicable for one repeater) that’s another case where we would just list it as CSQ.