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Simulcasted FD Tone-Out on Motorola Type II

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DMBFireman

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I have several trunking scanners from both Radio Shack and Uniden including a BC895XLT, new BCD396T, PRO-2067?, etc. My county simulcasts Fire Department dispatches from VHF Frequency 155.8350 on each respective FD's talkgroup on the 800 MHz trunked system. None of my scanners will pick up the transmission of this simulcast. All other radio traffic works and is recieved without problems. The tone-outs however I cannot hear on the trunked system (I can hear them on the VHF). I can't figure out what would cause this? My BCD396T is using Control Channel only scanning but the other two scanners have all frequencies programmed and are not using CC scanning. So, I can't see it being a CC scan issue?

I have a Motorola radio for my fire department which also will not pick up the tone out while scanning the talkgroups. However if you monitor only one talkgroup it will pick up the tone out. Anyone have any clue what causes the scanner to not pick up the tone-out and dispatch transmission?

Brandon Thetford
 
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DaveNF2G

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The toneout transmissions might be done in conjunction with a status bit change. Is your scanner set to ignore status bits?
 

fineshot1

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DMBFireman said:
I have several trunking scanners from both Radio Shack and Uniden including a BC895XLT, new BCD396T, PRO-2067?, etc. My county simulcasts Fire Department dispatches from VHF Frequency 155.8350 on each respective FD's talkgroup on the 800 MHz trunked system. None of my scanners will pick up the transmission of this simulcast. All other radio traffic works and is recieved without problems. The tone-outs however I cannot hear on the trunked system (I can hear them on the VHF). I can't figure out what would cause this? My BCD396T is using Control Channel only scanning but the other two scanners have all frequencies programmed and are not using CC scanning. So, I can't see it being a CC scan issue?

I have a Motorola radio for my fire department which also will not pick up the tone out while scanning the talkgroups. However if you monitor only one talkgroup it will pick up the tone out. Anyone have any clue what causes the scanner to not pick up the tone-out and dispatch transmission?

Brandon Thetford


Brandon - Are you sure the simulcast is being done on a talkgroup? It could be on a conventional frequency that is not part of the trunk system. Why would a tone out be
simulcast on a talkgroup when there are no pagers capable of tracking talkgroups
on trunk systems? You might want to double check into that.....fineshot1
 

car2back

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Catoosa FD does this in my area.... there is no pager tone on the talkgroup, just the VHF simulcast, and as fineshot1 said, why drop tones on the trunk system when there's no reason too?
 

mlevin

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I know Howard County Maryland now drops tones on the trunk system. They didn't use to though. Personally I think an analog tone being patched into a digital TRS talkgroup sounds lousy.
 

rdale

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Monroe Co does not transmit their tones when they simulcast on their trunked system - just the voice that follows.
 

car2back

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Grog said:
Good question, but it does happen.


I know I'd want to hear them if my FD ever goes trunked (yeah, right!); I am sure I am not alone: I can tell what Dept and/or if it's a fire or EMS run by the tone combination before dispatch ever says a word! :lol:
 

rdale

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Keep the conventional pager freq in your scanlist then.
 

car2back

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rdale said:
Keep the conventional pager freq in your scanlist then.

Well, when and if Morgans Corner VFD goes to trunked radios, and there is a split band 800 Trunking/VHF conventional walkie available, I'll do that.

Maybe there will be a "Minitior-X" by then, and it will be a trunked P25 tone-pager, too:lol:
 
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morganAL

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It sounds like they are doing a console originated patch. I'm not sure if this applies to Motorola systems but on EDACS when the console originates a patch, the patch is assigned a SAID (system assigned ID). The system temporarily replaces the TG ID with the SAID. The CC tells radios that are on TG 123 to listen for SAID 456 for the duration of the patch. Scanners and even radios on the system that are not on that talkgroup will never hear the transmission because they are listening for TG 123 when everything is really being sent out on 456.

Like I said, I'm not sure if this applies to Motorola systems.
 

rescue161

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When I lived in Beaufort County in SC, they used 800 trunked for fire dispatch, but used the old VHF frequency. All of the county fire used the 800 MHz talkgroup to communicate on, but had to rely on their VHF pagers to alert them when a page went out (there are no pagers that track trunked talkgroups). Since there are no pagers that track trunked talkgroups, they had to keep their old VHF frequency and simulcast the fire dispatch talkgroup onto it. Since no pager can track a trunked system, then there is no need to broadcast the tones over the trunked system. They send the tones over the VHF freq and then broadcast on the 800 system which in turn would simulcast over the VHF conventional freq.

There is no reason to muck up the 800 system with tones when there is no need to - that is what the VHF pager freq is for.

Hope this helps.
 

DMBFireman

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fineshot1 said:
Brandon - Are you sure the simulcast is being done on a talkgroup? It could be on a conventional frequency that is not part of the trunk system. Why would a tone out be
simulcast on a talkgroup when there are no pagers capable of tracking talkgroups
on trunk systems? You might want to double check into that.....fineshot1


I see I got alot of varying replies. Here is what happens...

The county used to dispatch everything on VHF Frequency 155.8350. They still do use that for dispatching because that's what my pager is for. A couple of years ago they began toning out a couple of departments on the 800 system because those departments wanted to use their 800 station radios to receive their dispatches. So, they toned them out on their FD's talkgroups. The county has one talkgroup to talk to the dispatcher and then 15 or so talkgroups for each fire department. Now they are toning out every department on their talkgroup in addition to still using the VHF frequency.

When a tone-out occurrs, the VHF frequency activates first and then the talkgroup starts to tone (so there is a delay between them). I know this because the dispatcher waits a few seconds for the 800 tone out to finish before she starts talking. When she talks the voice goes over both the VHF and 800 talkgroup with no delay (they are together perfectly). The tones again however are delayed from each other by a few seconds. So, I don't know if it is a true simulcast or not...whoever said something about the tone-out being done through the console I do remember someone saying something about that being done in our case...perhaps I need to look for other talkgroups that the tones are coming out on?

Brandon
 

DMBFireman

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and I just found a piece of the puzzle....

Heard the dispatcher say she was about to tone out a fire department and put the scanner in search mode...

I heard the tone-out on a different talkgroup, so it must be assigning it a temporary talkgroup each time...

Now the question is will those talkgroups change every time or is there maybe a pool of talkgroups they will use so I can program those in to be scanned? I guess I will need to search and log what I find to know. Thanks everyone for the help!

Brandon
 

pfish

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DMBFireman said:
and I just found a piece of the puzzle....

Heard the dispatcher say she was about to tone out a fire department and put the scanner in search mode...

I heard the tone-out on a different talkgroup, so it must be assigning it a temporary talkgroup each time...

Now the question is will those talkgroups change every time or is there maybe a pool of talkgroups they will use so I can program those in to be scanned? I guess I will need to search and log what I find to know. Thanks everyone for the help!

Brandon

What talkgroup is the dispatcher on, and what talkgroup do you hear the tones on? Here, our FIRE DSP1 talkgroup is at 44368. They Simulcast tones on BLUE, 154.370. The dispatcher actually does a multiselect, so if you aren't ignoring status bits on your scanner, the tones actually come out on talkgroup 44375 (44368+7). After the tones are finished on both sides, it reverts back to 44368.
 

DMBFireman

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as an example I have found by searching the tone-out for Sanger Fire Dept. is on TG 8503....the actual talkgroup for Sanger FD is 8496. As in your example, there is a +7 difference...so, if I set the scanner to ignore status bits then it will put the tone out on the correct channel?

Brandon
 

DMBFireman

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well thanks for the help on status bits...setting them to ignore made it work like it should. All the FD tone-outs are now coming up on the correct talkgroups. Thanks for the help!!!

Brandon
 

brian

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Where I live, EMS tones out on a conventional 800MHz frequency dedicated for tone-out (called EMS PAGE). The use the state 800MHz TRS for dispatch and Ops traffic. This way, they can set their radio to the conventional EMS PAGE mode, and set Quick-Call II decoding to Alert Mode and use their radio as their pager.

That eliminates the need for two devices (1 VHF and 1 800) and two licenses.

Do they make an 800MHz Minitor or equivalent?

Brian
 

DMBFireman

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I don't know of an 800 MHz minitor. I can tell you that in our situation outfitting our members with VHF pagers would be much cheaper than outfitting them with 800 MHz radios that do trunking and can be set to a conventional frequency for paging. We wouldn't be able to do that. So while it make sense from a licensing standpoint and less to carry around...the cost outweighs that.

Brandon
 

WX4JCW

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The Talkgroup "Could" Change each time a dispatch is sent out, it depends how the dispatcher sets up his/her console, the Motorola CRT's are funny that way, the department i dispatched for (Orange County Fire Rescue {Florida}) put their tones on a UHF Channel, then they give a 3 beep alert tone on the Fire 1 Talkgroup to allow the station tone to finish (a musical 3 tone note that i almost didn't hear the first time i was at a station and the tone went off) Orlando Fire tones exclusively on 800 with not many issues.


annoying here is the sheriff's office, they multicast all code 3 dispatch alerts on several TG's and it is a hassel finding those.
 
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