"Daniel W. Rouse Jr." wrote in
:

In the area I am in--on frequency 151.1900 (CDF/Cal Fire dispatch, Monte
Vista), sometimes a radio transmission will be preceded by several DTMF
tones (touch-tone phone button tones). On other occasions, a radio
transmission will be preceded by two musical tones, about 1 second each,
with the first tone being higher than the second tone, almost sounds
like high pitched fog-horn type tones.

Is there any significance to this?




Sure!!! The DTMF tones are probably used to access parts of the system on
an as neede basis eg a normally off repeater that has dialup access The
othere tones are used for Fire Pagers These a usually carried by Volunteer
Firemen in rural areas. The dispatcher can pager the firemen by sending a
unique tine pattern that unlcoks the squelch in a specific fire department
Those tone are usually followed by an announcement eg "Attention Podunk
fire department, please respond to a fire alarm at civic address xxxyyyyy
please acknowledge receipt of this page Operator qq K.

At least thats what they are used for here

Hope it helps



--
Panzer