Being a 9-1-1 dispatcher (well before we had 9-1-1 anyway), a fire-fighter/medic and a cop over a 40 or so year span I have had or seen my share of weirdities occur. Since this is a scanner forum I will try to keep it radio related as much as possible but please don’t shoot me if a segment or two are not specifically radio related.
Pager escape: Back in the late 1970’s when I was a young firefighter my usual spot was on the tailboard of the ladder truck. Back then one of the engines we had didn’t have jump seats but pretty soon it was replaced with a more modern one. Even so sometimes we ran with 5 or 6 guys, so two would have to ride the tailboard. I understand that this is no longer allowed but it was a common practice then. We had safety belts and a buzzer switch; 2 buzzes and you were good to go, 1 meant stop or stay.
We were on a call one day running down the main drag of town and I dropped my Minitor pager. I was trying to hear the radio traffic for the call, a house fire IIRC. Since we did not have a radio speaker on the tail board that was the only way to do so. I told my partner on the step and asked him “Now what?” He was a few years older than me, next up on the Lieutenant’s List, and well respected. He hit the buzzer and the company engineer/driver (Out east they would call him a chauffeur, but we were in the real world and called them drivers) hit the brakes. He must have thought one of us fell off or something.
Once stopped my partner took off running down the middle of the state highway, flashlight in hand, looking for my stray Minitor. Meanwhile I told the driver and captain that “We dropped our radio”. Now I didn’t mention that *I* dropped my pager, but he thought I meant a portable radio. Back then we only had 1 or portables per rig, one for the officer and one for the crew (on some rigs) and they were expensive. Soon enough my partner came running back, my pager in hand and said we are good to go.
He never told anyone it was MY pager, not a department owned two-way and that I dropped it. He took the fall, and the ribbing that went with it. Since he was well-liked, he joined right in. The chief was duly notified and decided that no harm/no foul and no discipline was needed. I did buy him dinner and a few beers. Since I was only 18 I had to drink Coke but he did enjoy the steak and Michelob.
I tried to get radio speakers added to the tailboard of the ladder and both engines, but they never did. Eventually they banned tailboard riding altogether and newer rigs had 4 jump seats.
Siren Stuck:
The ladder truck we had was equipped with the best siren known to man; a Federal Q. The Q Siren was basically a 100-amp 12V motor attached to a fan blade inside a housing that was engineered so that it made a loud, piercing wail. Ours was operated by either a dashboard switch or a foot pedal. It also had a siren brake to allow the officer to stop the siren quickly, otherwise it could take minutes for it to wind down once power is withdrawn.
Drawing 100 amps, this required some pretty thick wiring. We had was similar to a battery cable going to it but apparently someplace along the way there was a smaller wire attached that couldn’t handle the current draw. My memory has faded somewhat but it might have been in the relay, but whatever failed caused the siren to get stuck on. I was acting officer, being the most senior guy other than the engineer/driver so I got to ride in the right seat for the call at 3:00 on a 10 below zero winter night. I figured that if I had to be awake so should everyone else in town, so I let that mechanical marvel rip!
About halfway to the call we were turned around by dispatch as the alarm was an accidental trip. I let off on the floor button and pressed the siren brake. Nothing happened. The driver asked if I had heard that we were returned, I said yes, but that the siren would not stop. I crawled down to the floor to pull up on the siren switch, no joy there. Here we were at 3:00 AM, siren blaring, all the way back to the station. We pulled back into the bay and shut the doors to try to contain the noise, but now 15 guys inn the station are suffering from the torture of the loudest siren not mounted on a pole reverberating around a 3-bay fire house. It took 10 or 15 minutes to find the fuse panel and pull the cigar-sized fuse for that siren. The wiring was all enclosed in the bumper and we were all simultaneously trying to remove the siren from it’s mounts to no avail.
Pretty soon the police arrived at the firehouse trying to figure out what was wrong. I had tried to call them on the radio on the way back, but the siren was so loud they couldn’t hear us over it. They were getting calls from the neighborhood wondering if it was the tornado sirens going off, one family called us the next morning to ask if it was OK to come out of the basement yet.
The village mechanics finally figured out the problem and replaced some components, but I was off when the truck returned to service a few days later. As far as I know the two trucks that have replaced that mid-1970’s one have also had the same type of siren, let’s hope the switches were better made.
Pager Pollution:
Our small fire department was dispatched by the larger town next door. We did however have a fully equipped dispatch room and could take over dispatch if needed. This included a phone with the 7-digit (pre-911) emergency number, a desk set radio with both the dispatch and mutual aid channels, a scanner and, most importantly for this story, a Motorola QuickCall-II paging encoder. Now this encoder might not have been a Motorola product, I haven’t seen one elsewhere nor can I find any pictures. It was a set of square, white buttons with 6 rows and 2 columns. The rows were numbered 1 thru 6 and the columns were A and B. You selected the proper button from each column and pressed the red “Send” button. The tones would go out. Our Station 5 was 1-2, Station 6 was 3-2, the Chief was 4-2 and the all-call was 2-2. Other towns in our area used the same tone group, just different buttons. Each of the 4 towns had a different “B” tone, ours was “2” in whatever QC-II group it was.
When Flight 191 crashed near O’Hare Airport in 1979 I had been on the fire department for all of 4 months. Our dispatch center was also the head of the local Mutual Aid division and was responsible for coordinating response to the crash as it occurred in one of the nearby suburbs. The dispatcher called us and said we were on our own. We would have to answer our own phones (Pre-911) and radio traffic.
I was at home and saw a smoke header in the distance as I was washing my car. Soon there after my pager went off, and off again, again… The tones went out 10 or 12 times and in between I could hear someone saying, “How do I shut this off?” I assume that when he pressed the “Send” button he did so at a weird angle and caused it to get stuck in the closed position, repeating the pager tones over and over until he was able to mash it again to release it.
A year or so later at my dispatch job in another town we had a new paging encoder, this was possibly a CSI PE-1000 or similar, it had what looked similar to a Touchtone phone keypad. You pressed the proper numbers and then the “P” button to send the codes. Somehow, I figured out that if you pressed numbers on the keypad while it was sending the tones would change and make all kinds of weird sounds.
I played with this sometimes using the PW channel so I wouldn’t set off any fire pagers. One night a friend was working the next town over, and I told him to pop in our PW channel in his scanner but he was in the middle of a movie on TV (small towns, bored dispatchers…) so he said he didn’t bring it. I figured as long as I stayed away from the 5 & 9 buttons (which set off our pagers) I would be fine at 2 AM so I did it on the dispatch channel. Not a good plan! I thought it was a hoot, but Dan said something like “stop bothering me” and hung up.
5 minutes later the phone started ringing. First it was the deputy fire chief. Next it was the other deputy chief. Then the big chief. Turns out whatever buttons I pressed opened the Chief’s pagers. I didn’t even know they had a separate code.
Needless to say, the tapes were pulled the next morning. The only thing that kept me from getting fired was that I ‘fessed up and admitted I was playing around. If I had lied I would have been sent packing, as it was I took a day off and counted my blessings that it wasn’t worse.
Pager escape: Back in the late 1970’s when I was a young firefighter my usual spot was on the tailboard of the ladder truck. Back then one of the engines we had didn’t have jump seats but pretty soon it was replaced with a more modern one. Even so sometimes we ran with 5 or 6 guys, so two would have to ride the tailboard. I understand that this is no longer allowed but it was a common practice then. We had safety belts and a buzzer switch; 2 buzzes and you were good to go, 1 meant stop or stay.
We were on a call one day running down the main drag of town and I dropped my Minitor pager. I was trying to hear the radio traffic for the call, a house fire IIRC. Since we did not have a radio speaker on the tail board that was the only way to do so. I told my partner on the step and asked him “Now what?” He was a few years older than me, next up on the Lieutenant’s List, and well respected. He hit the buzzer and the company engineer/driver (Out east they would call him a chauffeur, but we were in the real world and called them drivers) hit the brakes. He must have thought one of us fell off or something.
Once stopped my partner took off running down the middle of the state highway, flashlight in hand, looking for my stray Minitor. Meanwhile I told the driver and captain that “We dropped our radio”. Now I didn’t mention that *I* dropped my pager, but he thought I meant a portable radio. Back then we only had 1 or portables per rig, one for the officer and one for the crew (on some rigs) and they were expensive. Soon enough my partner came running back, my pager in hand and said we are good to go.
He never told anyone it was MY pager, not a department owned two-way and that I dropped it. He took the fall, and the ribbing that went with it. Since he was well-liked, he joined right in. The chief was duly notified and decided that no harm/no foul and no discipline was needed. I did buy him dinner and a few beers. Since I was only 18 I had to drink Coke but he did enjoy the steak and Michelob.
I tried to get radio speakers added to the tailboard of the ladder and both engines, but they never did. Eventually they banned tailboard riding altogether and newer rigs had 4 jump seats.
Siren Stuck:
The ladder truck we had was equipped with the best siren known to man; a Federal Q. The Q Siren was basically a 100-amp 12V motor attached to a fan blade inside a housing that was engineered so that it made a loud, piercing wail. Ours was operated by either a dashboard switch or a foot pedal. It also had a siren brake to allow the officer to stop the siren quickly, otherwise it could take minutes for it to wind down once power is withdrawn.
Drawing 100 amps, this required some pretty thick wiring. We had was similar to a battery cable going to it but apparently someplace along the way there was a smaller wire attached that couldn’t handle the current draw. My memory has faded somewhat but it might have been in the relay, but whatever failed caused the siren to get stuck on. I was acting officer, being the most senior guy other than the engineer/driver so I got to ride in the right seat for the call at 3:00 on a 10 below zero winter night. I figured that if I had to be awake so should everyone else in town, so I let that mechanical marvel rip!
About halfway to the call we were turned around by dispatch as the alarm was an accidental trip. I let off on the floor button and pressed the siren brake. Nothing happened. The driver asked if I had heard that we were returned, I said yes, but that the siren would not stop. I crawled down to the floor to pull up on the siren switch, no joy there. Here we were at 3:00 AM, siren blaring, all the way back to the station. We pulled back into the bay and shut the doors to try to contain the noise, but now 15 guys inn the station are suffering from the torture of the loudest siren not mounted on a pole reverberating around a 3-bay fire house. It took 10 or 15 minutes to find the fuse panel and pull the cigar-sized fuse for that siren. The wiring was all enclosed in the bumper and we were all simultaneously trying to remove the siren from it’s mounts to no avail.
Pretty soon the police arrived at the firehouse trying to figure out what was wrong. I had tried to call them on the radio on the way back, but the siren was so loud they couldn’t hear us over it. They were getting calls from the neighborhood wondering if it was the tornado sirens going off, one family called us the next morning to ask if it was OK to come out of the basement yet.
The village mechanics finally figured out the problem and replaced some components, but I was off when the truck returned to service a few days later. As far as I know the two trucks that have replaced that mid-1970’s one have also had the same type of siren, let’s hope the switches were better made.
Pager Pollution:
Our small fire department was dispatched by the larger town next door. We did however have a fully equipped dispatch room and could take over dispatch if needed. This included a phone with the 7-digit (pre-911) emergency number, a desk set radio with both the dispatch and mutual aid channels, a scanner and, most importantly for this story, a Motorola QuickCall-II paging encoder. Now this encoder might not have been a Motorola product, I haven’t seen one elsewhere nor can I find any pictures. It was a set of square, white buttons with 6 rows and 2 columns. The rows were numbered 1 thru 6 and the columns were A and B. You selected the proper button from each column and pressed the red “Send” button. The tones would go out. Our Station 5 was 1-2, Station 6 was 3-2, the Chief was 4-2 and the all-call was 2-2. Other towns in our area used the same tone group, just different buttons. Each of the 4 towns had a different “B” tone, ours was “2” in whatever QC-II group it was.
When Flight 191 crashed near O’Hare Airport in 1979 I had been on the fire department for all of 4 months. Our dispatch center was also the head of the local Mutual Aid division and was responsible for coordinating response to the crash as it occurred in one of the nearby suburbs. The dispatcher called us and said we were on our own. We would have to answer our own phones (Pre-911) and radio traffic.
I was at home and saw a smoke header in the distance as I was washing my car. Soon there after my pager went off, and off again, again… The tones went out 10 or 12 times and in between I could hear someone saying, “How do I shut this off?” I assume that when he pressed the “Send” button he did so at a weird angle and caused it to get stuck in the closed position, repeating the pager tones over and over until he was able to mash it again to release it.
A year or so later at my dispatch job in another town we had a new paging encoder, this was possibly a CSI PE-1000 or similar, it had what looked similar to a Touchtone phone keypad. You pressed the proper numbers and then the “P” button to send the codes. Somehow, I figured out that if you pressed numbers on the keypad while it was sending the tones would change and make all kinds of weird sounds.
I played with this sometimes using the PW channel so I wouldn’t set off any fire pagers. One night a friend was working the next town over, and I told him to pop in our PW channel in his scanner but he was in the middle of a movie on TV (small towns, bored dispatchers…) so he said he didn’t bring it. I figured as long as I stayed away from the 5 & 9 buttons (which set off our pagers) I would be fine at 2 AM so I did it on the dispatch channel. Not a good plan! I thought it was a hoot, but Dan said something like “stop bothering me” and hung up.
5 minutes later the phone started ringing. First it was the deputy fire chief. Next it was the other deputy chief. Then the big chief. Turns out whatever buttons I pressed opened the Chief’s pagers. I didn’t even know they had a separate code.
Needless to say, the tapes were pulled the next morning. The only thing that kept me from getting fired was that I ‘fessed up and admitted I was playing around. If I had lied I would have been sent packing, as it was I took a day off and counted my blessings that it wasn’t worse.
While a kid in the '90s some of my friends had wallets like that. As well as the aforementioned pagers. Today kids have smartphones! 
