Inexpensive VHF Radio with 2-tone decode

[blaster668]

I am looking for inexpensive radios that offer 2-tone decoding. I am looking at a much cheaper alternative to Minitor pagers. Even used obsolete wide band radios will be considered.

Requirements:
Fairly compact
Rugged
at least one channel
150mhz range
programmable
Needs to have some type of alerting beeps or sounds

What would you suggest? I would like to try to keep these under $100 per radio, used is fine.

[rdale]

Vertex is probably your best choice, but I'm not sure it'd be under $100.

[stonek554]

I would recommend the Connect Systems CS3011 VHF radio. The website lists it for about $300, but if you call them they will sell it to you for $160 with the programming cable. Mine works great on 2-Tone decoding and I really enjoy the radio.

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[mancow]

I just picked up a $100 TYT UVF1 dual bander and it has two tone decoding plus other formats and awesome battery life with a ton of included accessories.

[SteveC0625]

How about Minitor 3's and 4's? I have a growing pile of them that I can offer to you for under $100 each with charger and battery. All are in good shape.

How many would you like?

[blaster668]

I regularly buy used HT1000's for around $50 each, I know these are capable of two tone decoding but they are just so large and heavy, which makes them great for fireground radios, but not so much as a pager. I just figured that Moto or Kenwood would have made something lower end in that era that was way more compact and probably sells on Ebay for next to nothing regularly. I do have a couple TK-250g's that, radio is certainly getting closer to what I'm looking for, but they seem to have problems with batteries losing contact with the radio. Used Vertex VX-160's sell for pretty cheap used, but I rarely see them for sale.

[trlrdrdave]

Motorola P100. You can buy them about 10.00 on Ebay.

[NCFire11]

I have an ICOM F30-GS, old but it does a damn good job.

[MTS2000des]

newer small radios that are narrowband compliant: Kenwood TK-2160, used around 100-150, still supported by Kenwood. Very cheap to replace housings and cosmetic parts. Uses common 2-pin Kenwood audio accessories available all over the place.

If you want a brick, I second the HT1000. Make sure it's a DN revision (model number will end in DN, e.g. H01KDC9AA3DN) as these are narrowband compliant and do 2.5KHz splinter channels. Fairly easy to replace housing parts though the parts are getting pricey as the radio has been OOP for a few years, though still depot supported. Don't pay more than 100 bucks for one.

[krokus]

Swissphone and Apollo make voice pagers, which are less expensive that new Minitors. Is this something that you are looking for a person to carry, and be receive an alert?