Let me set the stage...it's 2:30AM, and it's a quiet morning in Mayberry. You're out on patrol cruising neighborhoods, enjoying the peace and quiet. You've got your earpiece in and the radio is turned up pretty loud, because of that one guy on your shift who mumbles and the other one who can't bother to take his in-car mic off the clip on the dash and just keys up and talks from three feet away.

All of a sudden, BEEEEP BUUUUEEEEEEEEP BREEEEEP!!!!!!! Dispatch tones out fire to go help EMS with some guy who stubbed his toe or some other such nonsense. I get it, you've gotta rouse the hose draggers from their beauty sleep, but holy hell, my left ear is bleeding now! And of course they always have to do it two times (because fire is special and apparently you've gotta tell them everything twice for them to understand it)...so before my hand can get to the volume knob, there it goes again.

In all seriousness, I do appreciate our fire guys, but there's got to be a better way for them to communicate!

The alert tone used to scare the crap out of me on a regular basis. I felt that it was sometimes done by dispatchers for funsies.
This works for revenge:
1- Turn on siren.
2- Hold radio mic in front of siren speaker.
3- Push mic button.
Disclaimer: Modern digital systems may ID your unit, so the whole thing can come back haunt you.
But it may be worth it. Good luck!

Yeah, big brother in the computerized radio has kinda spoiled most of that old school fun these days. Having a stash of 27s and 28s with inappropriate, unpronounceable, or otherwise "interesting" returns to run at opportune times is still a fun game, though .

We had a dispatcher who like to pull pranks so we came up with a bit of revenge. One very late night a deputy checks out on a 10-37 suspicious vehicle at some remote, well know lovers lane with male and female occupants and gave the license plate to his wife's car and car description.

Hey at least you're not the one who had to get out of bed to go deal with the guy with 8 cars in the driveway and a stubbed toe

quote:

Originally posted by tleo205:
We had a dispatcher who like to pull pranks so we came up with a bit of revenge. One very late night a deputy checks out on a 10-37 suspicious vehicle at some remote, well know lovers lane with male and female occupants and gave the license plate to his wife's car and car description.

Thats evil. I like it!

quote:

Hey at least you're not the one who had to get out of bed to go deal with the guy with 8 cars in the driveway and a stubbed toe Big Grin

This is true...a lot of the stuff people call EMS for just boggles my mind.

quote:

Thats evil. I like it!

There was a long pause before the dispatcher calls to have him phone the office

quote:

Originally posted by ryan81986:
Hey at least you're not the one who had to get out of bed to go deal with the guy with 8 cars in the driveway and a stubbed toe

My life at 03:00 Fire pager is right next to my pillow in the headboard. There is nothing like a lift assist for toe pain over yonder in the trailerpark at 02:00.

At least when I'm on the bus and sitting point, I don't have to get dressed in the dark to run a call.

Patrol units here never monitored fire, only their dispatch centers did. They would advise that we were responding and unless we special called them they wouldn't show up.

If you think it's a PITA in your car try getting yanked out bed at 2AM. It's no wonder cardiac events kill most of us. It's nice to be retired.

Most stations now have the tones ramp up over a period of a few seconds to avoid shocking the hell out of the system.

I joined the fire department back in 1985. Back then along with a pager we carried on our belt they also gave me a Plectron.
A plectron is a home based alert system that work's like the pager. No one told me how loud to set the volume so on my first night I turned it up,I did not want to miss my first call.
Well at around 3am (weren't all night the calls in everyone's stories at 3am) it went off, to this day I think there is still a dent in the ceiling above my bed of the apartment I lived in back then.
It was so loud I think they heard it back at the firehouse.
When I told them about it they laughed the ass off. From that point when ever we brought in a new member I warned them. Some listened some did not.

I unfortunately never had a plectron but I did have a pager at one point. Those things would scare the piss out of you in the middle of the night as well. I never understood why they didn't come with different tones.

quote:

Originally posted by ryan81986:
I unfortunately never had a plectron but I did have a pager at one point. Those things would scare the piss out of you in the middle of the night as well. I never understood why they didn't come with different tones.

Yea between the tone and a dispatcher we had that loved to yell when he dispatched, it made for an interesting way to wake up at 3am.
It was even more fun when we were dispatched for a working structure fire.

Are you talking about the ,
W e e e w a a a h h h
W o o o o
W e e e e
Sounds on the radio?

I wanted to get my old fire tones as a cell phone ringer for my alarm clock. Nothing gets you out of bed faster.

quote:

Originally posted by bendable:
Are you talking about the ,
W e e e w a a a h h h
W o o o o
W e e e e
Sounds on the radio?

Yes. There are often multiple fire units (and multiple agencies) on the same radio channel. These tones act as an indicator to a specific unit's radios that they're being called, and the electronic tone causes their radio to then activate and transmit the following voice transmission from dispatch.

This way, they're not having to listen to all the radio traffic for other units all the time. Some agencies have even fancier things hooked up to be activated by the tones, so that when their specific tones sound, their lights come on automatically, their garage bays open automatically, etc.

Plus, it's really loud, so it works as a handy alarm to that unit's firefighters that they're being called out, so they all know it's time to pause the Xbox, turn the pot of chili down to low, put on some pants, and go do some real work.

(Or in the case of volunteer firefighters, wake up, apologize to the wife, and put on some pants.)

Those Minitor I and IIs could make my heart pound like nothing before or since (excepting a few pretty-eyed women). They had a “sound” none of the newer stuff could duplicate.

My uncle's Plectron scared the hell out of me when I was a tyke. It sounded like a banshee from Hell.

There are a ton of different tones out there, most of them are just a pattern of 2 or 3 different hz still tones.

This website has a bunch of the LAFD style tones which uses an older version of the same system: http://www.policeinterceptor.com/emerg.htm

That big list of tones is a kick

Never, ever,
Would I have thought that a site like that
Would exist.