Icom radio to use as a pager

[n9upc]

I am on two different public safety departments and each department has a different paging freq. On one department we run a total of 4 tones (3 two-tones and 1 long tone) on the other department we run 6 tones (based on station assignment for that day).

One department has the policy that once paged you turn it to position B for scan mode so the pager has to be 2 channel. The other department has one paging channel but when on duty suggests to leave it in open mode. So the pursuit for a pager with 3 channels starts and so far as I started looking at pagers that might work I see the price reaches low $400 - almost $500 in some cases.

So I once heard that some radios might be able to do what I want it to do. The specs of what I need are: VHF, 128 ch or more, signalling for two-tone with 10 call addresses, the ability to have voice storage, ability to assign either one or multiple signalling two-tones to a channel, and something that is not going to be much bigger than a Minitor 5.

The specs need to be: VHF, 128 ch or more, ability to hold 10 different signalling two-tone addresses, voice memory/storage option, and not much bigger than a Motorola Minitor 5 pager.

Now yes my departments provide pagers but to have a radio as small as a pager eliminates a LOT from my belt. So I was looking at the Icom F-50V which seems to fit the bill and wondering if anyone else has any other model suggestions?

I am also looking at Vertex also but so far Icom seems to be the best bet. Thanks in advance for the comments and input.

[RodStrong]

Originally Posted by n9upc

So I was looking at the Icom F-50V which seems to fit the bill and wondering if anyone else has any other model suggestions?

I think the IC-F50V is likely a good bet for you.

IC-F50V / F60V VHF / UHF transceiver - Features - Icom America

Good luck.

[Avery93]

Although it may be implemented better in the F50/60V, I have not had any luck with 2-Tone decode on other Icom radios. They do not seem to tolerate any frequency error in the tones, and they can't be over or under modulated at all.

I have never been able to get a F33, F3161 or F5021 to work reliably with my county's tone encoder. The radios will decode maybe one out of five tones, but that's it. Also, when a neighboring county bought some Icom P25 radios and a new paging console, their radio shop spent almost an entire day adjusting the console before they finally got the Icoms to decode the tones.

I would suggest Kenwood or Motorola over Icom. Both brands have much better 2-Tone support, and more robust scanning features. Although I don't have any first hand experience with them, I would also look at the Vertex VX-450 series, as they seem to be perfect for this application. I wasn't really impressed with earlier Vertex radios, but I have heard only good things about the new 450 series.

[cabletech]

The problem I have found with any radio being used as a pager is, both the dispatch radio and the recieving radio need to be as close to center frequency as possible.

I have set up Icom F21's and Kenwood TK290's and Motorola HT750/1250 with pager ablity and the only problem I had when setting them up, was the dispatch radio was 700 hz off the low end of the frequency and all my radios were +/-2 hz.

The Moto had the worst problem then the Kenwood and Icom.

After working with the dispatch tech, things have been working for over 5 years.

And yes I also set up 4 F50's and no problems

[traumacop]

We have had very good luck with the F33s decoding pager tones, even 2+2. With the cost of the Min V and high rate of failure we have programmed all radios as a backup pager and most like carrying the radio instead of the pager now.

Also, I have noticed a problem with the HT-1250 decoding while in a charger and then pulled from a charger after alerting. They radio transmits what sounds like fax or something of the like for several seconds without the ptt being keyed.

I agree the the the previous comments about the transmit radio needing to be on the correct frequency and we also got rid of some tones that were on the edge of the radios capability that could potentially cause the tones to not be decoded.