Utah & Juab County Two-Tones Added to the Wiki

[PMJ2kx]

Hi folks,

I realize in 2023 that fire tone-out (FTO) may not be a thing where you live, but it's still alive and well in Utah and Juab counties. Whether you're living nearby or just visiting, I wanted to add this info to their respective wiki pages in case you still use that feature on your scanners!

Utah County Fire/EMS Two-Tone List
Juab County Fire/EMS Two-Tone List

Couple of notes...

• The Utah County list does not include Provo (2J), Orem (3J), Springville (4J) and Mapleton (10J) - if they still do VHF paging on their own systems, feel free to add what channel and associated two-tones if applicable
• Pleasant Grove (7J) uses DTMF tones for alerting, so they are also not included on the Utah County list
• I haven't heard Cedar Fort (23J) or North Fork (21J) get a call lately - if you know these tones, please feel free to add them in; otherwise I will continue to monitor for them
• I know that even though West Desert (7O) is part of the Juab County Fire Special Service District, they are extremely rural/frontier and while I included them in the Juab County list, I have no idea how they are dispatched so they just have a placeholder for now
• Spanish Fork (6J) was doing some new tone testing a day or two ago, but I haven not heard these since - I'll include them here, but I haven't heard them being used yet

  • Tone A	Tone B	Use
    953.7	304.7	Station 61 General Tones
    979.9	304.7	Station 62 General Tones
    1063.0	304.7	Chief 61 Tones
    1092.0	304.7	Battalion Chief 61 Tones

Anyway, I hope someone will find this useful for FTO in these counties. I don't know what the future holds with the digital transition so enjoy these while you can if you can!

Happy scanning!

 

[PMJ2kx]

UPDATE: Spanish Fork started using their new two-tones last night around 8PM - here is the table revised with the correct descriptions:

Tone A	Tone B	Description	8PM System Pager Test?​
953.7	304.7	EMS Station 61 (AMB61, SQ61)	Yes​
979.9	304.7	EMS Station 62 (AMB62, SQ62)	No​
1063.0	304.7	Fire tones for both Station 61 & 62	Yes​
1092.0	304.7	Tones for Chief 61 & Chief 62 only	No​

669.9 / 746.8 (EMS) and 669.9/707.3 (Fire) are no longer heard on 159.950 Mhz and have been discontinued in the nightly pager test.

 

[ranger2004]

Orem does use 154.145 for fire, but not sure its a two tone.
If I recall its just al long one tone.

 

[N7OLQ]

Thanks for that! Tone-outs are something I've never played with before. I just plugged in a couple of local stations into an SDS200 and currently waiting to see what happens.

 

[N7OLQ]

Thanks for that! Tone-outs are something I've never played with before. I just plugged in a couple of local stations into an SDS200 and currently waiting to see what happens.

As a follow up, I've seen it in action several times now. Its really cool, and a nice way to just focus on the station calls I want. Having seen it now, I think dedicating a $700 scanner to just monitoring some tone-outs doesn't make much sense. Now to search for my least-used scanner that has tone-out capability (at least until UCA kills VHF with the P25 system next year ). I have a few BCT15's that don't get much use. I think that will work.

 

[PMJ2kx]

As a follow up, I've seen it in action several times now. Its really cool, and a nice way to just focus on the station calls I want. Having seen it now, I think dedicating a $700 scanner to just monitoring some tone-outs doesn't make much sense. Now to search for my least-used scanner that has tone-out capability (at least until UCA kills VHF with the P25 system next year ). I have a few BCT15's that don't get much use. I think that will work.

Glad you're able to get some use out of it! I've read through a lot of UCA literature and reports, but nothing I've read mentions anything about paging. Further, I read (and somewhat paraphrasing here) that they will leave independently run systems (i.e. at the county or city level) alone. 153.950 is licensed under KVR805 (Utah County).

I haven't read up on Central Utah 911's plans so no clue if it will hold true, but we very well could have two-tone for a while after they switch over to the P25 voice system...

 

[N7OLQ]

Glad you're able to get some use out of it! I've read through a lot of UCA literature and reports, but nothing I've read mentions anything about paging. Further, I read (and somewhat paraphrasing here) that they will leave independently run systems (i.e. at the county or city level) alone. 153.950 is licensed under KVR805 (Utah County).

I haven't read up on Central Utah 911's plans so no clue if it will hold true, but we very well could have two-tone for a while after they switch over to the P25 voice system...

Last I heard, UCA was coming up with a bunch of money to upgrade the old VHF systems. I hope it isn't true. I have a lot of vintage scanners (Pro-77A, Pro-2001, BC-300, Bearcat 101, etc.) that I use to monitor the remaining VHF public safety frequencies.

 

[enosjones]

All of the state or most is going p25, I'm not sure if anyone will stay on vhf analog

 

[ranger2004]

All of the state or most is going p25, I'm not sure if anyone will stay on vhf analog

I would bet that most of the state will keep fire/ems paging they currently have.
This allow for very cheap pagers that are in place to continue to work.

Keeping a separate paging system is smart for redundancy and local control.
The cost would be very easy to get approval for. $0 since its in place.

 

[enosjones]

Utah County has their paging on 800, it may also be broadcast on vhf as well. But they definitely page on 800

 

[Junior1970]

There is/was a statewide pager frequency that was created some while back (152.0075) but I have only heard Sanpete and Millard County fire/EMS agencies use it.

Utah County still uses the 153.950 pager frequency (patched to Central Utah Fire 1 TG) and will continue to do so due to the rural agencies in the south end of the county that are still volunteer. Pager tests at 2000 hours (8pm.)

 

[PMJ2kx]

Hi folks - there are some additional changes to take note of for Utah County:

• Unified Fire Authority (25J) (Utah County)
  • Station 251 - New station, but tones and equipment stay the same
  • Station 253 - New Mid Valley Station; currently only houses an ambulance, but will eventually have an engine, ladder, and battalion chief
  • Reminder: Unless Cedar Fort (23J), Saratoga Springs (26J) or Utah County Fire (11J) are part of the call, you will not hear UFA tones on 153.950 MHz
• American Fork Fire & Rescue (5J)
  • Station 51: New split fire / EMS tones
  • Station 52: New split fire / EMS tones
  • Haven't heard tones for command/staff yet but will add them once they get recorded

Tone A	Tone B	Description
726.8	726.8	UFA Eagle Mountain - Mid Valley Station 253
433.7	349.0	Station 51 Fire
433.7	389.0	Station 51 EMS
433.7	539.0	Station 52 Fire
433.7	483.5	Station 52 EMS

All the information has been added to the wiki!
RR Wiki - Utah County

Happy scanning!

 

[kirkco]

How do you - or what tools do you use to ID the tones? I've been trying to capture Tooele County for some time using my several SDS100 and SDS200 scanners with varying results. Most of the time, my SDS's report only Tone B and even then, the reported tone between the scanners - running at same time differ slightly. I even monitor two different simulcast frequencies and sites and get the same varying results. Example, for a Tooele ambulance call, one scanner will report Tone B as 788.3 and the other 788.5. Not sure why Tone A is usually missed - even with a two-tone call - - - and Tone B varies even for same department. BTW: Thanks for reporting on your findings for Utah County - a place I lived for many years and still love.

 

[PMJ2kx]

How do you - or what tools do you use to ID the tones? I've been trying to capture Tooele County for some time using my several SDS100 and SDS200 scanners with varying results. Most of the time, my SDS's report only Tone B and even then, the reported tone between the scanners - running at same time differ slightly. I even monitor two different simulcast frequencies and sites and get the same varying results. Example, for a Tooele ambulance call, one scanner will report Tone B as 788.3 and the other 788.5. Not sure why Tone A is usually missed - even with a two-tone call - - - and Tone B varies even for same department. BTW: Thanks for reporting on your findings for Utah County - a place I lived for many years and still love.

Here's my setup:

• BCD346XT with stock antenna, Uniden USB-1 cable, and an audio cable going from the headphone out jack to line in on my PC
  • Squelch is set to its lowest setting without being open all the time and recording "fuzz", and
  • It's set to hold on 153.950 MHz since that's all that I need to monitor
• FreeSCAN to virtually control, log, and record audio
• Ableton Live 11 Standard with the Tuner plugin (set to measure Hz) to analyze the audio files one by one, and
• After writing them down, making reference to the standard Motorola Quick Call 2 tone tables (see here for example) because there is a hum in the audio from both the scanner and the PC which causes the tone generator to not get the tones 100% correct

Like you, I found the FTO search function on all three of my scanners (346XT, 325P2, and 996P2) don't accurately decode the "exact" tones, so I go the extra mile for accuracy...although, I don't recommend spending the money on Ableton Live 11 just for analyzing tones haha...that's just overkill. I already owned it and thought "Well, what could be more accurate than a professional-grade DAW?"

I have had a few times where I'll get A but no B (and for that matter, the rest of the transmission), and I'm not sure if that's the scanner, FreeSCAN, or the transmission itself. However those are few and far between so it hasn't been an issue.

I've attached a sample of what I hear on my end (this is for American Fork Fire & Rescue):

1. Tones for BC51
2. Tones for Station 51 fire apparatus (RES51, TOW51)
3. Tones for Station 51 EMS (MA51)
4. Fire "Alert" Tone (1000Hz) - there's also a medical "alert" tone and a "misc / cancel / unknown incident" tone they use
5. "Samantha" doing her thing...

You'll note there's a VERY small gap between audio-recording starting and tones dropping. And of course the audible hum which sometimes confuses the Tuner plugin in Live.

 

[kirkco]

Thank-you for your very detailed and helpful reply! It certainly seems like it is pretty challenging to get good and results by just using the scanner hardware. Generally speaking, discovering Fire Tone-outs for this more rural county is not really a big necessity, but rather just a "fun" challenge in the overall hobby for me. Anyway, it happens that my boys who are music producers have Ableton Live and are willing to analyze my recorded data further. Your attached example from AF will help fine tune our process (so maybe the experiment can continue a bit longer). I really appreciate your feedback (and AI Smanatha's hard work in dispatch).

 

[PMJ2kx]

Hi folks - me again. Some more updates for everybody following this thread:

Agency	Tone A	Tone B	Notes
American Fork F&R (5J)	746.8	634.5	Previously thought to be deprecated, but still in (rare) use; Station 51 general tones; not tied to specific apparatus or assignments
American Fork F&R (5J)	746.8	788.5	Previously thought to be deprecated, but still in (rare) use; Station 52 general tones; not tied to specific apparatus or assignments
Spanish Fork F&R (6J)	669.9	746.8	Previously thought to be deprecated; now only used for AMB63/64 in the rare event they are staffed (or cross-staffed by the squads when AMB61/62 are already on calls)
Spanish Fork F&R (6J)	669.9	707.3	Previously thought to be deprecated; now only used for RES61/RES62 even though they may be dispatched with 1063.0 / 304.7 (current Spanish Fork Fire tones)
North Fork Fire District (21J)	330.5	339.6	Finally heard when dispatched with Utah County fire; unless you're up at Sundance, don't expect to hear these elsewhere in the county except when 20J or 11J are on the same call

As always, all updates have been added to the wiki.