TO: ALL WOOD COUNTY ARES MEMBERS (OFFICIAL)
ALL ARES AND NON-ARES AMATEURS ANYWHERE (INFORMATION)
FROM: KEN HARRIS WA8LLM ARRL DISTRICT 3 EMERGENCY COORDINATOR
WOOD COUNTY EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS INC.
ARES BULLETIN NR 16.06 DATE: February 7, 2016
SUBJECT: LONG TONE ZERO
In ARES Bulletin Number 16.05, it talked about how you can be alerted in an emergency even if telephone and cell phone service is not available. For many years Amateurs have used a service called Long Tone Zero, or LiTZ for short. What is a Long Tone Zero? Long Tone Zero is a system that uses the Zero on the Touch Pad of your Hand Held radio, or on the Microphone of your Mobile or Base radio. Most of the new radios come with Touch Pads on them.
To operate a Long Tone Zero system, you need a device that is designed to recognize the Touch Tone number of Zero. The device needs to be designed so that a three to five second tone will set off an audible alert, or turn on the speaker of the radio that it's attached to.
A Long Tone Zero device can be plugged into the speaker jack of a Handy Talkie, and then have its own built-in speaker that will be turned on when the radio receives the Touch Tone Zero, and sends the audio to the Long Tone Zero decoder device.
The Long Tone Zero system would be great at night, when you're sleeping, and don't want to hear everyone talking on the frequency, or the repeater that keeps identifying. It doesn't take much to build the Long Tone Zero decoder, and it would come in handy.
Ken Harris WA8LLM
WV ARES District 3 Emergency Coordinator
WCEC
Wood County WV