Classic Minitor II Question

[chrisb480]

Hello all,

I recently purchased a Minitor II SV off ebay and Im working on programming it. Its is a dual channel model, and I plan on putting two crystals into the A+B spot. Heres my question. The county in which the pager is toned out for each company is given two tones. For example, 123 & 1234. Of course the 123 would go in the A spot and the 1234 would go in the B spot. If a fire call were to come out both tones would be sent. However, if a medic run would come out a long B (1234) would be sent. So what I'm getting at is I dont really feel like having the pager go off for a busy medic in the middle of the night. Will the pager go off for the medic tone since its in the B position and the tone is a Long B?

 

[nyemt774]

Hi Chris, I have a Minitor II, also. I could be wrong on this, but I beleive that the II needs both tones to activate the alerts. A single tone won't do that.

 

[58006]

Minitor II Two Tone vs. Two Tone / Single Tone

Hello all,

I recently purchased a Minitor II SV off ebay and Im working on programming it. Its is a dual channel model, and I plan on putting two crystals into the A+B spot. Heres my question. The county in which the pager is toned out for each company is given two tones. For example, 123 & 1234. Of course the 123 would go in the A spot and the 1234 would go in the B spot. If a fire call were to come out both tones would be sent. However, if a medic run would come out a long B (1234) would be sent. So what I'm getting at is I dont really feel like having the pager go off for a busy medic in the middle of the night. Will the pager go off for the medic tone since its in the B position and the tone is a Long B?

There is a jumper that needs to be in place or removed, don't remember which way (sorry) to allow the Minitor II to do long tones. If you have a local radio shop you deal with it should not cost you that much to make sure the Minitor only does two tone alerting.

 

[SteveC0625]

Everything you always wanted to know about Minitor II tone coding and jumpers for same:

Minitor I/II/III/IV

 

[NCFire11]

Get a III/IV or V, no crystals or tone filters, and easy to do what you want with it. AND the III/IV are cheap. <$100

 

[GTR8000]

If I'm reading your post correctly, you don't care if the pager ever alerts for the medics Long B tone, you're only interested in having it alert for the FD A-B tone pair...correct?

If yes, then it's easy to set the pager to ignore the Long B and only alert on the A-B combo. On the back of the decoder board, make sure jumpers 3C1, 3C2, 3C4 and 3C5 are all "open".

Get a III/IV or V, no crystals or tone filters, and easy to do what you want with it. AND the III/IV are cheap. <$100

Why would he want a piece of junk III/IV, especially when he said he already owns the II? The II is head and shoulders the best performing pager Motorola ever made, period.

 

[SteveC0625]

Why would he want a piece of junk III/IV, especially when he said he already owns the II? The II is head and shoulders the best performing pager Motorola ever made, period.

Amen! We're dealing with the inevitable jump to narrow band, and what few II's we have left probably won't perform so well after the switch. I am carrying a II and will miss it. I've had one on my hip off and on since they first came out.

 

[GTR8000]

Our county still pages over low band, so those II's will be relevant for a very long time. Heck, we've still got plenty of guys using Plectrons from the 60s at home. I have to laugh when young guys mock us old fogies for clinging to our old pagers and Plectrons. Those are the same guys who miss calls because their fancy new synthesized piece of junk didn't alert, or false alerts within 50' of any computer lol.

 

[NCFire11]

JUNK!? The minitor IV is the best i have ever owned. I was just saying it had ease of programming compared to the II. It does have its flaws with decreased sensitivity and inability to narrowband, but still a great pager. NOT JUNK.

 

[GTR8000]

The III/IV series (exact same guts inside, just different plastic case) have more flaws than just that. For starters, they're made in Taiwan. There were many problems with the circuit boards, including a well documented flaw where the decoder IC would detach from the board and the pager would no longer alert. The sensitivity is very much decreased compared with the crystal controlled II series.

Anyways I'm glad you had good luck with your IV, so I won't beat the point to death in this thread, but I cringe whenever I see people recommending the III/IV series based on well documented history of years of problems with them.

 

[lucas2121]

My Minitor II works just find with narrow band.

 

[SteveC0625]

My Minitor II works just find with narrow band.

Tell us more!

I am particularly interested in audio level, changes in range or sensitivity, and overall general performance.

We'll migrate to Minitor V's anyway to take advantage of fully programmable everything. But it will be interesting to see if maybe, just maybe there will continue to be a market for used Minitor II's, III's, and IV's after the switch to narrowband.

 

[lucas2121]

Tell us more!

I am particularly interested in audio level, changes in range or sensitivity, and overall general performance.

We'll migrate to Minitor V's anyway to take advantage of fully programmable everything. But it will be interesting to see if maybe, just maybe there will continue to be a market for used Minitor II's, III's, and IV's after the switch to narrowband.

My minitor II picks up just as far as my portable, audio sounds fine if not louder that my Icom f33g.
It will pick up dispatch better then our ht1250s sometimes.
The second channel in mine is our EMS rptr and a county two counties up from us uses the same frequency as their fire channel, their on narrow band too and my minitor II will pick it up like were in their county(this isn't a problem because our EMS rptr over powers the signal whenever someone keys up) where as my f33g will only pick up the other county sometimes and you can forget about the 1250s picking it up. The one benefit I see to the V is having PL tones.

 

[wd8chl]

Well, you may consider it ok, but it's not up to public safety quality needs once your system narrowbands. And the big issue is that when (not if) they license someone else 12.5 Khz for UHF, or 7.5 for VHF, away from your frequency, you'll wonder what the heck you were thinking...

And yes, I realize this has no bearing on lowband. For the folks on low band, more power to ya!!!

 

[NCFire11]

I've read about a firmware hack for the minitor IV that allows narrowbanding? Not sure if it is official and im sure /\/\ doesnt support it, but sounds good to me.

 

[SteveC0625]

Well, you may consider it ok, but it's not up to public safety quality needs once your system narrowbands. And the big issue is that when (not if) they license someone else 12.5 Khz for UHF, or 7.5 for VHF, away from your frequency, you'll wonder what the heck you were thinking...

True for the most part, but folks need to consider their own communities and the growth of radio usage around them.

Where I am in upstate New York, it's not likely that there will be much (if any) growth in VHF for quite a few miles around. We have plenty of channels already licensed here for our needs, and I don't foresee any new frequency requests here or nearby for a long, long time. Thus a Minitor II, III, or IV might continue to work very well for quite a while.

All of the fire service in our county has already switched to Minitor V's. My ambulance squad is planning to replace every pager we have with Minitor V's. Another squad prefers two-way portables with tone alerting instead of pagers, and they will all be narrow band ready before the switch happens here.

But unlike the wide band only two-ways, those pagers could be useful for a while longer for some people in some circumstances. I would never issue one to a responder, however.

 

[lucas2121]

Well, you may consider it ok, but it's not up to public safety quality needs once your system narrowbands. And the big issue is that when (not if) they license someone else 12.5 Khz for UHF, or 7.5 for VHF, away from your frequency, you'll wonder what the heck you were thinking...

And yes, I realize this has no bearing on lowband. For the folks on low band, more power to ya!!!

I really get tired of hearing about public safety quality.
Our system and most around are already narrowbanded
I am located in a rural area and by the time they license someone for 7.5 for VHF I would hope they have a better product for paging anyhow.