Aww thank you for your reply. So my thinking I have had on the way an alert works was correct. So I'm guessing now any Fire tones you hear drop prior to a Fire page would be actually coming from the dispatcher? For programing this into the scanner would I program the dispatch channel? (some channels on the datebase say tones still used.) Or would I have to do it under tone-out search? thanks
So usually, tones are dropped from a dispatcher, but some stations/departments can drop their own tones. In our area, the county next to us actually has their full-time firefighters drop their own tones when volunteers are needed because they are dispatched via 800 but the pages are on lo-band.
You program the dispatch frequency into the tone-out menu.
If you know what tones you want, program those in as well. If you don't then use tone-out search which will record the tones and tell you what the tones are for the departments when they get dispatched.
Think of it this way:
Tone-Out HOLD is the equivalent of your pager being on monitor mode. The channel is never squelched and you hear everything coming across that channel.. The difference is when the tones you want to hear are dropped, the uniden scanner won't sound an extra alert (whereas your minitor will).
Tone-Out STANDBY is the equivalent of your pager being on alert mode and acts exactly like it. When the desired tones are heard, the uniden scanner will play the alert tone of your choosing, and then it will unsquelch and place itself into the HOLD mode (see above, basically the same as the monitor mode on your minitor) untill you squelch it again using the hold button (the equivalent of the squelch button on your minitor pager)
Tone-Out SEARCH is a function unique to the scanner. This is the one that will readout on the screen what the frequencies of the tones that just played were so you can decide to store them if you want.; This is useful if you do not know what the department's audible tone frequencies are.
Hope this helps!