Two-Tone Paging Verification

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tvfd230
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Joined: Fri Apr 23, 2004 12:16 pm
What radios do you own?: APX7000, XTL5K, XTS2500

Two-Tone Paging Verification

Post by tvfd230 »

Trying to get some idea and see if anyone else has come up with a fix for this. Our County Dispatch center is operating Telex Radio Consoles with radio and paging capability. In a recent incident where a network switch went bad, the dispatcher set the fire and rescue department tones via the console however the tones were never transmitted on the air just in the dispatcher's ear. Obviously this was a special situation in which we found a bad network switch, but it got me thinking how would the dispatchers know if the tones were transmitted out or not?

My quick fix was to put three Minitor V pagers in the dispatch center that activate (on vibrate) for each of the tone sets for all 7 fire departments and 7 rescue squads and set to auto reset. This is not a very good long term solution, but works for now to a degree.

Anyone have any other ideas??

Thanks
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SteveC0625
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Re: Two-Tone Paging Verification

Post by SteveC0625 »

Our dispatch center went through that years ago. A much different cause back then, but the same fix required. They ended up installing a monitor with an external antenna and wiring it right into the consoles on one of the channel buttons. It was set so that it could not be fully muted or the volume turned all the way down, but wasn't loud enough to cause feedback. So the dispatchers learned to work with the dispatch audio in their ear much the same hearing yourself on a landline telephone. The result was that you always heard the tones and voice reliably from an on-air monitor.
Al
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Re: Two-Tone Paging Verification

Post by Al »

Another solution might be to use Commtek's 2 tone decoder on a PC fed from a monitor receiver. The software implementation would allow time-tagged logging of tone sets that were actually transmitted, but AFAIK now no aliasing display of the tone sets.
http://www.comtekk.us/two-tone-decoder.htm
RFguy
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Re: Two-Tone Paging Verification

Post by RFguy »

We have a multi-department system that uses pagers for pageout. The departments are spread out over a couple hundred miles, so the departments local transmitters can't be heard at dispatch. We installed a "Ack Back" system at each of the departments that are to be paged out. It uses a 2-tone decoder and voice announce unit connected to a base station radio at the remote halls to "squawk back" a pre-recorded voice that says "xxxxxx paged".

Dispatcher sends the page, waits for the squawk back and then gives the voice message.
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Bill_G
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Re: Two-Tone Paging Verification

Post by Bill_G »

RFguy wrote:We have a multi-department system that uses pagers for pageout. The departments are spread out over a couple hundred miles, so the departments local transmitters can't be heard at dispatch. We installed a "Ack Back" system at each of the departments that are to be paged out. It uses a 2-tone decoder and voice announce unit connected to a base station radio at the remote halls to "squawk back" a pre-recorded voice that says "xxxxxx paged".

Dispatcher sends the page, waits for the squawk back and then gives the voice message.
I like that idea. A number of radio models, such as the CDM, will ACK upon decode. The only problem I see with it is if you are tapping out multiple agencies. You could set off a storm of self interference if you didn't wait for each ACK before proceeding. It's an ideal system check - phone lines are good, levels are good, power is good, and the receivers are good.
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was jsikora
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Re: Two-Tone Paging Verification

Post by KB2ZTX »

Had a similar problem many years ago. As it was a go or no go situation we also installed "monitors" on the system. Basically the audio is sent to a module on the console that is turned down low. The other item we did on some of them was run the COR to a small LED on the console. Basically if anything was TX from the console on that channel it would light up. This was a good way to get both funtions.
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