Tone Challenged? Here’s Help!

Like many columns, this one was sparked by a letter. Greg Jones from Escondido, CA, wrote “I’d like to be able to have my scanner activate when the fire department pages the tones for a call. I bought a scanner with “tone squelch” but no matter what I try, it doesn’t seem to work.”

Well Greg, I’m afraid I have bad news and good news. The bad news is that the system used by your fire department for paging is not included in the “tone squelch” system of your scanner, so that’s not going to work. I have heard some discussion of trying to follow some of the protocols used for these systems, but there are many in use around the country, and I’m not convinced (and I’d gather the scanner manufacturers aren’t either) that it would do much for you as a scanner listener. Your receiver would essentially have to be dedicated to that one frequency and would stay quiet except when they page the tone for your particular fire house. There are some commercial devices (called pagers) that will do just that. For the most part, it’s not what scanner enthusiasts are after.

With the wide variety of systems and codes possible, the scanner would have to be fairly complicated, and therefore costly. If you really need to follow a particular system, you might check with the two-way radio supplier and see if there’s a low-cost option or pager that might be available to do what you want. I am aware that many scanner enthusiasts use older plectron receivers to accomplish this, but getting the right combination of receiver, crystal for the right frequency and reeds for the tones can be a complicated matter. And that’s only if your system uses a tone system that’s compatible with one of these receivers.