Firehouse Alerting

[n9upw]

Wondering if anyone has any experience with any 800 digital firehouse alerting systems. We recently had one installed at our department. Each fire station has two XTL500 radios. One is interfaced to the station intercom system and the other is used for normal communications (like a base unit). Each station has a switch that is labeled "Day" and "Night". In the day mode, you can hear all traffic over the intercom system. However in night mode, only after receiving a call do you hear the traffic, then after 60 seconds, the radio resets and is quiet until the next call is received. This brings me to my question: When the system is in night mode, there is a constant "tapping" noise heard on the intercom speakers throughout the station. This only happens in night mode. It almost sounds like water dripping on the speaker. Any ideas what causes this or how to correct it?

Derek, N9UPW

[nmfire10]

Kinda depends on how they are controlling that audio. If they are using the radio's built in signaling and built in muting, it shouldn't be too hard to narrow down. Disconnect the audio from the radio. If the sound goes away, you know its the radio. If the sound remains, you know it is in the amplifier system.

If there is some external audio muting control, the sound could be coming from that too.

[chartofmaryland]

If your XTL5k is in scan it will do the click in priority scan.


CoM