TK-7360 "Short decode" issue

[firefighter47]

so I have a bit of an issue and was wondering if anybody is familiar with it. I'm a firefighter/EMT for my local fire department and our County Pages out on one channel. Normally operates on another channel, and our department talks around on a tac Channel. All VHF.

there' an otion on this radio were you have a normal tone decode, which is wait for the tone to get done before the alert tone goes off or "short decode" option, where on a long tone, It alerts 4 seconds into the town and immediately after the second tone of a two-tone.

my problem is, it works perfectly as long as you're not in scan. But when you're scanning, whether you're on that signal channel or on a different Channel it listens to the whole tone before it alerts and acts as if the short decode option is turned off.

Anyone have any ideas on ways around this? I thought maybe it's a firmware issue or just a general bug since this is a fairly new option for Kenwood TK series radios.

Thank you in advance

 

[mmckenna]

Does not sound like a radio, firmware or programming issue. Sounds exactly like a "trying to scan and catch 2 tone pages at the same time" issue.

And for this very reason, we used dedicated radios in the station for alerting. Scanning runs the risk of missing pages (as you noticed).

You can play around with "priority scan" settings and the line, but ultimately it's never going to be reliable. If you want the paging to work correctly, get rid of scan, or get a dedicated pager.

 

[kb4mdz]

I've found tone decoding and scanning to be generally incompatible. Others may have had better luck, but it hasn't been good in my experience.
Trouble is, for tone decoding you have to listen for the tones for a minimum amount of time to decide if it meets the frequency and timing requirements; if your scan switches over to the paging channel and doesn't catch the tone for long enough, it will ignore it and move on.