What Replaced Two-Tone Signalling in Howard County?

[ab3a]

My wife and I live across from Howard County Fire Station 4. Our scanner was set up to open squelch on Station 4's tone combination. This morning she heard an announcement on the air that Howard County was migrating away from the two tone signalling to something else-- but she didn't catch what that new system name was.

Does anyone have further information on what the new system is? I'd like to continue keeping the scanner squelched except for Station 4 calls.

 

[atlong]

Howard County Trunking System, Various, Maryland

Howard County Trunking System Profile

www.radioreference.com

 

[maus92]

My wife and I live across from Howard County Fire Station 4. Our scanner was set up to open squelch on Station 4's tone combination. This morning she heard an announcement on the air that Howard County was migrating away from the two tone signalling to something else-- but she didn't catch what that new system name was.

Does anyone have further information on what the new system is? I'd like to continue keeping the scanner squelched except for Station 4 calls.

Are you monitoring the VHF frequency, and has it changed? Are you still hearing tones being sent out?

 

[ab3a]

We're monitoring the VHF frequency.

 

[ab3a]

By the way, I just heard SOME sort of two tone signalling but I haven't heard a whole lot of traffic on the channel.

 

[maus92]

By the way, I just heard SOME sort of two tone signalling but I haven't heard a whole lot of traffic on the channel.

Fewer tones sets than before?

Tones are generally for alerting volunteer FFs via pagers. I don't know the structure of the HCFDs, but if a station is manned by all-career FFs, there is really no need for tones for those stations - alerting can be done via CAD vs. OTA.

 

[ab3a]

I'm listening to figure out what my wife heard. Station 4 (Lisbon) is staffed by many volunteers. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that someone might replace this system with a text group to call volunteers to the station when needed.

 

[maus92]

I'm listening to figure out what my wife heard. Station 4 (Lisbon) is staffed by many volunteers. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that someone might replace this system with a text group to call volunteers to the station when needed.

Generally you would want tone based alerting for volunteers. I'd listen for a few days, or stop by the station on a weekend and ask if something has changed.

 

[markgrutz]

I had the scanner on all night last night, and they were dropping tones all night. I would check your frequency and PL codes to make sure they match the DB. It should be 154.2500 and 103.5 if you are using PL. As of about 530am when I walked out of the house it was working loud and clear in Ellicott City.

 

[firephoto184]

My wife and I live across from Howard County Fire Station 4. Our scanner was set up to open squelch on Station 4's tone combination. This morning she heard an announcement on the air that Howard County was migrating away from the two tone signalling to something else-- but she didn't catch what that new system name was.

Does anyone have further information on what the new system is? I'd like to continue keeping the scanner squelched except for Station 4 calls.

Is it possible she may have heard them moving from their type 2 system to the new P25 one?

 

[The_B_Chief]

Fewer tones sets than before?

Tones are generally for alerting volunteer FFs via pagers. I don't know the structure of the HCFDs, but if a station is manned by all-career FFs, there is really no need for tones for those stations - alerting can be done via CAD vs. OTA.

The tones are used for more than just alerting pagers. The firehouse alerting systems may be activated by tones either as the primary, secondary, or a combination of both means of station alerting.

 

[maus92]

The tones are used for more than just alerting pagers. The firehouse alerting systems may be activated by tones either as the primary, secondary, or a combination of both means of station alerting.

Agreed, but many departments / stations use CAD as the primary method of station alerting and activating devices. Tone signaling is a legacy technology, but still can have a place with some departments.

 

[a417]

True but it doesn't have to be the 'traditional' two tone that many people hear and equate to signalling...I know several depts that ditched QC-II for DTMF or MDC due to "upgrades", so they didn't hear 'their tones' but they heard a noise that made the pagers & devices trip.

 

[maus92]

True but it doesn't have to be the 'traditional' two tone that many people hear and equate to signalling...I know several depts that ditched QC-II for DTMF or MDC due to "upgrades", so they didn't hear 'their tones' but they heard a noise that made the pagers & devices trip.

There were also other signaling tech that went out over the air, but they've mostly gone away - MOSCAD, INTRAC - two Motorola SCADA implementations. Typically you would hear a burst if it was transmitted over a voice channel, or sometimes would use a dedicated radio channel for data. Very inefficient.

Most departments / stations in urban and suburban areas have broadband connectivity, and modern CAD systems leverage that capability - makes multi-resource dispatching / alerting instantaneous. Areas that still rely on volunteer departments obviously tend to retain FTO, but it is common to see pagers supplemented by SmartPhone apps with data provided by CAD.

 

[a417]

Many of the changes away from QC-II also coincided with transitions from conventional analog radio systems to integration into trunked analog/digital radio systems, and the resultant change in subscriber units also dropped QC-II support... The volly firefighter didn't need to know that his tones changed, just that his radio still made noise when it was time to go somewhere.

My personal favorite was programming a digital channel on the radios that was named "Tone Channel" so that one particularly curmudgeonly group of senior guys could still have the "pager tones" on their radios. They didn't need to know what we did to make that work, but it made them less hostile towards the new digital system. They didn't know/care that they could just scan talkgroups any more efficiently, but would wait for a call to come in and then actively guard the mute button (a la Minitor days), just so "they could hear what was going on".

 

[maus92]

The counties in our area are hybrid professional / volunteer, so the radio infrastructure deployed are mostly P25 700/800 systems, dispatching is done by CAD, MDCs and in-vehicle routers with notebooks / iPads. But they also retain one or more legacy VHF simplex channels for QCII FTO to alert volunteers, staff officers and special units.

 

[a417]

Same thing we did, slight differences at the unit level with the supporting data infrastructure though. One place did in-vehicle wifi/routers, another place did sim cards in the tablets.