206 - Plectrons and Early Fire Alerting

Gregg Johnson and I discuss Plectrons and early fire alerting methods before portable radios and pagers were commonplace. We discuss the history of Plectron receivers and how volunteer firefighters were alerted to calls before they had in-home radio alerting or portable receivers. What You Need To Know Plectrons are one of the earliest types of home receivers ever used for volunteer firefighters. The plectron had a different name back in the beginning, and in 1955 it was called FYRCALL. It was the first model that they made. Plectrons was the first widely used in-home unit that allowed firefighters to be activated and keep the radio-quiet. Similar to today’s alerting receivers, the dispatcher would generate set tones that would set the receiver to activate. Plectrons were analog devices and required reads in the receivers. These reeds needed to be tuned by a radios shop and would resonate to the paging tone. If the resonate frequency matched, the Plectron would alert. Plectrons are a piece of radio history and many are still in use today. Scanner Radios with “Fire Tone Out” can mimic what early Plectron receivers were. ==================================== 🎙 Join our new Scanner Radio Community ==================================== Join our FREE Discord server and connect with other Scanner Radio Users! By using Discord, a free, multi-platform community portal, you can now be part of the Scanner Radio Discussion! Chat real time, share photos, ask questions, and give feedback to other's in chat. 🔗 https://www.scannerschool.com/discord   ==================================== 🎓 Check out our online courses ==================================== Our free Software Defined Radio course will have you up and running with a SDR in a weekend. Upgrade to our Advanced Course, and learn how to setup SDR Software like a pro. 🔗 https://www.courses.scannerschool.com   ==================================== ⚠️ I want to answer your questions ==================================== I am always looking to answer your scanner radio question. If you have a question you'd like answered, please leave me a voicemail with your question: 📞 516-308-2885 🔗 https://www.scannerschool.com/ask   ==================================== 🏆 Thank you Patreon Supporters ==================================== Thank you to all monthly Patreon Supporters. Supporting the podcast can be done for as little as $1 per month. Supporters at the $3 and $5 level will receive the podcast without the middle commercial break. Supporters at the $5 level not only receive the podcast early, but they also get access to discount codes, monthly zoom meetings, and Squelchy sticker packs. 🔗 Join our Patreon program at https://www.scannerschool.com/patreon   ==================================== 🎥 Subscribe to our growing YouTube Channel ==================================== We are live once a month on YouTube to answer your questions. 2022 will be the year of Video for Scanner School Be ready for the upcoming videos by subscribing now to our YouTube channel 🔗 https://www.scannerschool.com/youtube   ==================================== ➡️ Follow Scanner School on Social Media ==================================== ▶︎ Twitter - https://www.scannerschool.com/twitter ▶︎ Facebook Page - https://www.scannerschool.com/facebook  ▶︎ Facebook Community - https://www.scannerschool.com/faceboo... ▶︎ Instagram - https://www.scannerschool.com/instagram ▶︎ TikTok - https://www.scannerschool.com/tiktok    ==================================== All session notes with links to the items we talked about can be found on our website at https://www.scannerschool.com/session206