Wake County and "Emergency!" Sound

[mthom50]

Hi Folks, May be losing my marbles or hearing things, but does anyone else occasionally notice a sound either right at the beginning or end of some Wake dispatch transmissions (mainly SO, I think) that seems to be an old-fashioned tone pair followed by a "buzzer" sound? It actually sounds an awful lot like the tone out and buzzer heard when Station 51 gets a call on the old Emergency! TV series.

Just wondering if this is something official, or maybe it is used as a whimsical alert tone on a PC somewhere in the Wake/Raleigh comm center and just happens to go off once in a while in the background when they are on the air.

If anyone can satisfy my curiosity (or at least confirm I'm not imagining this!), thanks in advance!

 

[KE4ZNR]

maybe it is used as a whimsical alert tone on a PC somewhere in the Wake/Raleigh comm center and just happens to go off once in a while in the background when they are on the air.

I believe that is your answer. Wake SO does have an alert "warble" that they use before announcements but I am inclined to believe what you are hearing is background noise at RWECC.

Marshall KE4ZNR

 

[KG4KHQ]

Station 51

At my center, we have set it up that when a Fire call appears on the CAD screen to be dispatched, a .wav file of Station 51's tones and encoder will play. It keeps the telecommunicator on the Fire side from having to constantly stare at the screen to keep from missing a call that was entered by someone in another part of the room, like a little in-house encoder sort of. When I'm dispatching on the Police side, I don't monitor Fire events on my CAD screen but when I hear it activate, I can pull up the Fire call and see if it is anything that I need to be aware of. It does get your attention.

 

[WA4MJF]

We have a buzzer like that at our #1 station and a bell at #2 station, but you would not hear those over the air anymore. Used to key the transmitter so the dispatcher would know the siren was going off, but that has been gone for years. There is a fake siren sound after the tones, but that is generated by dispatch, not the station siren.

One of our to do thing is to get the siren back up on the pole.

 

[kb4mdz]

Sirens - ya gotta love 'em. Too many in this country are dying from neglect, lack of use, and 'noise' complaints.

I grew up in a village with a siren that got set off every day at noon. Great!! And the township is big enough, they had something like a Diaphone to code out for location for late arriving responders.

What model siren you got at your station, Ronnie?

One of our to do thing is to get the siren back up on the pole.

 

[WA4MJF]

Big red round Federal. It was on the water tower by #2, but they took down the tower, so we're gonna put it on
a pole on the hill behind #1. Although we have traffic light control there is nothing like the siren. In Rolesville,
theirs stops tfc all around. I don't know if they have a traffic light control or not.

 

[FireCop]

Are you hearing these only when dispatch transmits or when units transmit back to dispatch?

The reason I'm asking is some of our guys have the "Emergency" Station 51 alarm sound for whenever a message comes across their Mobile Data Computer. We can occassionally hear that sound in the background if the officer is speaking on the radio.

 

[mthom50]

KJ4KHQ and FireCop, Thanks for the info - I'm sure that explains everything I've heard. I'm not certain whether I've always heard it from the dispatch end or a mobile unit, though I'm pretty sure at least a number of times it was while a dispatcher was transmitting. It appears that either scenario would be possible, based on your two posts.

As an aside, for anyone who enjoyed the old show, it runs at 3 pm weekdays on the RTV subchannel of FOX 50/WRAZ.

 

[maultsby]

I had to go to Youtube to remember what the "Emergency" tones sounded like (I haven't seen that show since it was on network TV), but I believe the tone you're talking about is the indicator that there's a 911 call ringing in, but nobody available to answer it.