Do I want a voice pager, scanner, other device?

[WuLabsWuTecH]

So I'm on a volunteer FD running on the squad and I'm having the following issue:

I'm issued a radio to monitor the dispatch frequency when I'm out of the station, but because of our distance to the tower, it can be very static-y at times. I couldn't care less about the dispatch message--because I'm often in charge, if our tones go off for an EMS call, I need to get back to the station in 3 minutes, but the problem is that the quality is so poor, I can't often tell if the tones are ours or not (two other departments have similar tones with the first tone being identical).

The volunteers who live close to the station are issued pagers instead of a radio which has the similar problem of static. but at least when the right tone combo goes off, their pager alerts them. The second added bonus is that they have the ability to turn their pager to alert only so they don't have to listen to everything in the county. While I don't mind listening to everything, especially if our other units are out, I do stop paying close attention and having the alert chirp would be beneficial.

My chief looked into getting an alert on my radio, but concluded it would be very hard if not impossible without buying a new radio (which costs $$ and he does not want to do). Because of my status as taking station call only and being an in-charge, he will not issue me a pager since I'm required to have the transmit ability and now we're tying up two pieces of equipment for one person. He will let me get something I like with my expense account though.

So my question is this: what would be cheap but also be best suited for what I'm looking to do. So far, here are the ideas I've come up with, but I'm not very well versed in this sort of things and much prefer sticking to medicine!

1) Get a Minitor IV/III (or equivalent). The benefit here is that they are cheap, even with some of the bells and whistles (aka stored voice). Small and easy to carry, and will alert me like I want it to. The drawback is that I'm told they were not designed for narrowband and there may be some loss of fidelity. Once again, this is minor to me, when the tones drop, I ALWAYS have to go back to the station so not having a clear message is irrelevant. The volunteers who still carry these say they still alert just fine.

2) Get a Minitor V (or equivalent). Benefit being that it's obviously suited for our system and is what most people are starting to be issued on our department. The drawback is that they are expensive as crap and would deplete most of my expense account.

3) Get a scanner that has an alert feature on it. Not sure if these exist, but one again, I have my department issued radio so I really only need some consumer grade device to get that alert. Anybody know of what I am talking about?

4) Get a portable that has the alerting function on it! Ok, this one was just for giggles--i doubt I could even find a used one that was affordable, but this is what our LT's and Capt's who live in the district carry. They have the portables that also have the altering function in it. Alas, mine does not.

I'd be very appreciative of any other ideas anyone has. This is what my uneducated research has come up with--I'm not sure if these options are viable or if I'm missing something obvious. Right now the front runner is the first idea (not really sure what the difference is between the Minitor II and IV) as I could get the unit and charging accessories etc. for under $100 which would leave room in my expense account for some uniform purchases and a couple of pieces of gear I've been wanting to get this year. I would guess that if there is a consumer model, it would probably be a very cheap option as well.

Thanks in advance for your expert help! I'm really lost when it comes to this stuff!

 

[RodStrong]

Don't mean to inadvertantly poop on a motorola thread, but how 'bout this? A little bit of everything.

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

 

[WuLabsWuTecH]

Hey Rod, thanks for the suggestion, but this is way out of my price range! Those units start at about $350 it looks like. Also, I should probably mention I'm looking for a receive only device as getting a transceiver entails a lot more paperwork than I'm willing to fill out right now and I'm not sure that the department would authorize that since I already have one that in my chief's eyes "works just fine"!

But yes! Think is exactly the type of thing I'm looking for. Everyone around here has motorola stuff so I haven't been exposed to other viable options. I have a radioshack scanner to monitor other dispatchers (we operate in a multi-county area but I don't carry the other counties radios with me) so I know there are other receiver options, but alas, my scanner does not have an alerting function.

 

[firefive76]

What model of radio do you currently have? There aren't many Motorola radios out there that can't do 2-tone alerting.

 

[RBMTS]

Being that you say that people closer to the dispatch center still have static receiving problems leads me to believe that you must be pretty far away. A pager (that has an internal antenna) might not receive at all. If your commercial radio is noisy on receive then I can probably expect worse performance out of a scanner.

Is there anyone on your department that can let you borrow a pager or a scanner and test it from your usual locations? Maybe offer to buy one of them lunch and have them come out by you. Then you can ask your dispatch center to run a test to see if the pager or a scanner works from where you are at. I'd hate to have you buy something only to find out it won't work for you.

Firefive76 is correct that many of the commercial radios have the ability to do QuikCall paging/alerting. But it is possible that you have a radio that doesn't. If you let us know what you currently have, where you are located, and what town or county you run on, we can help you further. I'm wondering if maybe you are on a trunked system (which typically can't do paging) and that perhaps the other department you refer to has their own separate paging system that is separate from the trunking system. With so many rural departments going to the larger county (or even state) communication systems, it would be best for us to know exactly what your department/squad is working on.

 

[WuLabsWuTecH]

Hi Guys,

Thanks for the replies. The radio I have is pretty old, but we're on an analog VHF system. Because I live so far away from the station, I don't bother to take my radio home with me--I have a personally owned scanner which is very easily programmable and customizable and a lost less expensive for me to break! I will have a look the next time I am in.

To clarify, our dispatch center is not anywhere near our station--as a matter of fact, our department is farthest away from the radio tower for the county. Since when I am on shift, I am required to stay within 3 minutes of the station, we're all in the same area +/- 3 minute radius.

All of my colleague's pagers will trip (most of the time) to the tones anywhere within 3 minutes, but a lot of the times, especially when indoors, their pagers do little more than trip. That is part of the reason I am issued a radio--theoretically, I am able to hear the dispatch message even when the pagers can't. But with the static, sometimes the only things that comes through clearly are the tones. If it's a fire tone, it's very different than the EMS tone and I know not to worry, but if it's an EMS tone, I have to listen for the numbers called, and the genius that numbered our county, used very similar numbers for all the EMS units so if it's static-y, I can't tell who's being called.

So based on empirical evidence, I know the Minitor II/IV's work, and that the V's work a bit better. Also, the LT's and CAPT's models of portables will alert and are a bit more clear than mine, but they were also purchased within the last year vs mine which was issued to be as their old hand-me-downs from god knows how long ago.

I know that we are not on a trunked system. I do have a trunking scanner though as the other department I am on is on a trucked system. I have the Radioshack Pro-164, which I set a bank to the county so it also works where I am volunteering. It does a pretty decent job when I snap on a different antenna, but suffers from the same problems I mentioned above. I also have a Pro-95 laying around somewhere at home that i rarely use anymore.

Finally, it's worth mentioning that there are many times that I can in fact hear the dispatch message, and many times I can hear it better than other people I might be hanging around who only have pagers, but the advantage they have that I lack is for those times where the voice is coming through garbled and I can't make out the station number, they already know if it's them or not.

 

[WuLabsWuTecH]

Just talked to a buddy of mine and our radios say HT750 on the front. Does that mean anything?

He also mentioned that he's been having the same problem and the issue isn't that it can't do it, but that we can't set it up to do it. From what I understand (which may be wrong), all 16 channels are already in use, and to set up alerting on it, you can't set it up like the minitors where even when they are monitoring they will alert. You have to set it up to alert only on a separate "channel."

He also mentioned 2 things worth noting. The people setting up our radios may not be the best at it--for instance, my scan button is the same one for my emergency banner where I work in an 800 trunked system, and it's apparently not supposed to be setup that way.

Secondly, even if the alerting is possible, our chief does not want those of us with the HT750's--those of us who are in-charge and given an extra stipend to be within 3 minutes of the station--to have just an alert without monitoring. This is conjecture, but we think he wants us to be listening to other units on the air, so if, for example there is a fire run and they call for EMS, we can get the jump on dispatch saving about 3-5 minutes (don't get me started on our broken dispatch system where things need to be relayed through people at different sites). I don't know if all Minitors are set up the same, but if they are, he want's us to be on "option C" if we use alerting and not "option A." The LT's and Captains who are paid personnel, don't ever have alert only on their radios, but apparently mine does not have that monitor+alert feature and/or they are not willing/capable of programming it that way.

I hope I'm explaining myself clearly, but if I am not, just ask! Thanks for all your help so far guys!

 

[RBMTS]

You've explained the situation very well. I believe some of the later models of the 750 allowed QCII page decoding. But you would either need to get the radio to someone who can program it properly for you or buy the software and equipment yourself. All it would require is to modify the personality for the channel that has the frequency you monitor. The radio could be setup to sent out an alert tone when it decodes the paging tones. You can still listen to the frequency as you do now, just that it would alert with the tones.

I think a M3/4 or 5 would work best for you. You can find the 3's and 4's pretty cheap. The pagers are completely programmable so you can decide what actions take place on any of A/B/C/D switch settings. Settings can be monitor with alert, mute until alert, mute with vibrate, or any with alert & vibrate. It would totally be how best it works for you.

You sound pretty knowledgeable but just want to let you know to be safe. If you go to buy a pager off ebay, be sure to get the proper frequency range. Pagers are segmented into different frequency ranges for the VHF band (I believe there is 4 ranges). So make sure that a pager has the receive range for what you need to program it to. I've known too many people that bought pagers that didn't work for them. The seller advertised the pager as being a full VHF range, which they are not.

Hope this helps you.

 

[rapidcharger]

I don't mean to poop on a motorola thread either but "cheap" and motorola don't normally end up in the same sentence and there's lots of competition out there now. Motorola isn't the only manufacturer.
For the mid to upper $200 range you can get a brand new with warranty part 90 certified Icom 3021 or kenwood 2312, and both of those will do 2 tone (aka Quick Call). You can set up a radio so that it only makes a peep when you have it set to a channel with a 2 tone alert and you can have it play an alert sound on your radio when the 2 tone page is received and it will open your squelch. You won't be disturbed unless the page is received. And you can also set it up to monitor all the traffic when you're in the mood for that too. Having an external antenna or at least a rubber duck antenna should be an improvement for reception.

 

[SteveC0625]

You can set up a radio so that it only makes a peep when you have it set to a channel with a 2 tone alert and you can have it play an alert sound on your radio when the 2 tone page is received and it will open your squelch. You won't be disturbed unless the page is received. And you can also set it up to monitor all the traffic when you're in the mood for that too. Having an external antenna or at least a rubber duck antenna should be an improvement for reception.

Almost any manufacturer's products can match these features. It's kind of tacky and certainly misleading to suggest that only Icom or Kenwood or fill-in-the-blank can do these things.

 

[rapidcharger]

Almost any manufacturer's products can match these features. It's kind of tacky and certainly misleading to suggest that only Icom or Kenwood or fill-in-the-blank can do these things.

I never suggested only Icom or kenwood or fill-in-the-blank can do these things... I merely suggested that the OP is looking for something cheap to do the job and motorolas don't come cheap. There are lower priced competitors. I'd rather someone who is in the business of saving lives use a proper tool not some toy made-in-china scanner if they couldn't afford motorola's price tag. Even on the second hand market motorolas prices are higher.

 

[SCPD]

Just buy a repeater, put it on your house, and go from there... ;D

 

[UPMan]

As far as handheld scanners as a solution: Both the BC346XT and BCD396XT include a Fire Toneout feature that allows you to turn it into a pager during standby (can't scan at the same time). Added benefit is you can listen to TAC, EMS, PD, or other channels on the way to a call to get additional sitrep info.

 

[SteveC0625]

I never suggested only Icom or kenwood or fill-in-the-blank can do these things... I merely suggested that the OP is looking for something cheap to do the job and motorolas don't come cheap. There are lower priced competitors. I'd rather someone who is in the business of saving lives use a proper tool not some toy made-in-china scanner if they couldn't afford motorola's price tag. Even on the second hand market motorolas prices are higher.

Coupla points to consider:

First, I have picked up a lot of gently used Motorola gear at very low prices. I don't think it's necessarily true that Motorola is always going to be more expensive, especially used.

Second, since the OP already has an HT750, it's possible that it may already do two-tone. The info passed to us here so far kind of suggests that his agency and who ever works on their radios may not be taking full advantage of what they have now. That's yet to be fully answered. If the OP can give us the full model number, I can determine that right away.

Third, I added bold to one of your statements in quoting you. I would fully agree with you on that, although I would still suggest that there is Motorola gear out there at reasonable prices if that is what the OP truly wants. I am seeing HT1250's selling in the $125 range that will do everything the the OP wants and needs and a lot more.

My bigger concern is the fact that he's getting poor reception at his home on an HT750 and the staff at or near their base are getting poor reception on pagers. There's more at stake here to be examined than choice of pager or portable or scanner or whatever.

 

[WuLabsWuTecH]

You've explained the situation very well. I believe some of the later models of the 750 allowed QCII page decoding. But you would either need to get the radio to someone who can program it properly for you or buy the software and equipment yourself. All it would require is to modify the personality for the channel that has the frequency you monitor. The radio could be setup to sent out an alert tone when it decodes the paging tones. You can still listen to the frequency as you do now, just that it would alert with the tones.

I think a M3/4 or 5 would work best for you. You can find the 3's and 4's pretty cheap. The pagers are completely programmable so you can decide what actions take place on any of A/B/C/D switch settings. Settings can be monitor with alert, mute until alert, mute with vibrate, or any with alert & vibrate. It would totally be how best it works for you.

You sound pretty knowledgeable but just want to let you know to be safe. If you go to buy a pager off ebay, be sure to get the proper frequency range. Pagers are segmented into different frequency ranges for the VHF band (I believe there is 4 ranges). So make sure that a pager has the receive range for what you need to program it to. I've known too many people that bought pagers that didn't work for them. The seller advertised the pager as being a full VHF range, which they are not.

Hope this helps you.

Thanks for the detailed answer. I did not know that full VHF ranges did not exist and upon reading more manuals, I apparently need a VHF 'C' band. The cost of the pager plus the batteries and charger is rapidly approaching something I found at radioshack on my way home from work today. It's a uniden bearcat BC346XT scanner and it's on sale for about $180 through the week. The pagers on ebay look to be going for about $70-80 recently for standalones in my band and about $125 with all the chargers and batteries.

I can only think of a few drawbacks and they are all practical considerations (ex. the uniden is bigger and presumably heavier). Are there any technical drawbacks to getting the Uniden instead of a pager? I know that the Uniden can't monitor and alert on a given frequency. If you are in alert, it's silenced until such time your tones go off, and if you are in monitor, even when your tones go off, it will not sound the audible alert, but since I'm required portable transceiver anyways, this is not an issue. Oh, and it doesn't have vibrate which I wouldn't use, and stored voice which no one uses because the dispatch gets repeated when we're on station and ready to respond.

Are there any technical considerations I haven't thought of? I would actually guess that with the rubber thing sticking out it would get better reception than the minitor, and it looks to be a BNC connector so I could even use the antennas (antennae?) from my old scanner?

Thanks for such a detailed and knowledgeable answer RBMTS!

Steve and RapidCharger: I got what was being said. That there are alternatives for something I just want for convenience. And yes, my department would require that I carry the motorola even if I do have my own personal equipment. The personal equipment is just to make my own life easier. On nice days, I tend to go for a walk or to the park to read outside so I'm not in the station all day to hear the plectron. But I looked into those models and they are all transceivers which is overkill for what I want. I just need a listen-only device since I already have something I can transmit on (even if half the time no one can hear me because I'm so far away from the tower).

Adam: A repeater on the squadhouse would be nice! We actually have mobile repeaters mounted on all of our trucks except for the old engine and old grassfighter I believe so once our trucks start rolling, we have no issues with reception. Perhaps we should just keep a truck on all day?

UPMan: I went into radioshack this afternoon on my way home to look at it, and yes, the only drawback is that it can't monitor and alert at the same time (I don't need it to scan and alert, just monitor and alert). But you raise an excellent point in that it would also be able to scan from the two other dispatchers we serve (one is trunked, one is conventional) so I could get more info about the run and even get a jump on the call if I hear one of them dispatching us. (Once again, very screwed up dispatching system. The other dispatchers can drop our tones, but we don't have the equipment to hear it, so they drop our tones and either our dispatcher has to hear it or has to get a phone call from the other dispatcher to dispatch us through the frequency we actually monitor...) See above, but I'm wondering if there are any drawbacks to the Uniden over a minitor since the uniden is only a little bit more expensive and I'd be getting something brand new vs used and very old.

Steve: You are correct, in this case, the minitor solution actually seems to be the cheapest. I'm considering the Uniden only because it has more functionality and would be brand new. I would have to go look up the model number the next time I'm in. My colleague who has his with him doesn't know where that information is. I know for a fact that our truck portables do not have the alert feature as they are only 4 channel radios. An in the manuals I'm finding online, only the 16 channel radios have that feature. The other thing to remember too is that the county radio system is a very basic setup. We do not have outgoing encode to ID which radio is marking on the air, there is no emergency banner feature, we don't have selective call, etc.

Also, at one point, they had talked about getting rid of one of our mutual aid talkgroup channels on my style of radio and putting it to the dispatch channel for alert, but that idea fizzled. I'm not sure if it fizzled because chief didn't want us taking off that M/A channel, or he didn't want us not monitoring when "On the Air", or if it just wasn't doable.

Thanks for all the suggestions so far guys! You all really know your stuff!

 

[WuLabsWuTecH]

My bigger concern is the fact that he's getting poor reception at his home on an HT750 and the staff at or near their base are getting poor reception on pagers. There's more at stake here to be examined than choice of pager or portable or scanner or whatever.

Oops, missed this point. Yes, around our station our pagers and portables don't work. We have repeaters mounted on the trucks, but don't have one mounted on the station. I would assume that since I live over a half hour away, I also don't have reception at my home (but I do live closer to the tower... so...). But yes, it's an ongoing problem that has no good solution that I can implement. I just fix sick people, not broken radio systems!

 

[firefive76]

What you are wanting to do is possible with what you already have. You don't need to spend money on something else. Your HT750 will receive better than a scanner or a voice pager. If you have it programmed correctly, it will do EXACTLY what you want it to do---monitor the channel and alert when your department's tones are dropped. I use to have mine programmed that way, worked excellent (as long as you aren't scanning.) We have some old HT750's in our fleet, some dating back to 1999, and all of them can do the 2-tone alerting (QCII)

 

[WuLabsWuTecH]

Thanks firefive, I'll have to look into seeing if they can program my portable that way. Channels 1-3 are our dispatch channels (same frequency from the towers but different frequencies to talk to the towers is how it was explained to me. So based on where I am in the county, I choose different channels, but it only has an effect on my transmission quality and not my reception quality). I'll see if I can ask someone around here who knows more about the programming than I do to set one of those (or all of them) to alert when monitoring.

Is there a reason you think my HT750 (even though it's old) will get better reception than a scanner? I understand what people have said about the internal antenna of the voice pagers, and that makes sense, but both my scanner and HT750 have external antennae. Wouldn't the scanner, which is newer, do slightly better? Or is this the classical misconception of newer = better? (Also, I have a feeling that these radios predate 1999, but I could be wrong. No one remembers when these radios were bought which indicates to me it was a long, long time ago!

 

[SCPD]

Not sure if anyone else has mentioned this, but you could get a cheap chinese radio off ebay.
Something like the TYT UVF1 which I have does 2 tone paging and you can program the tones in yourself with free software and a cheap, standard cable.

 

[firefive76]

Thanks firefive, I'll have to look into seeing if they can program my portable that way. Channels 1-3 are our dispatch channels (same frequency from the towers but different frequencies to talk to the towers is how it was explained to me. So based on where I am in the county, I choose different channels, but it only has an effect on my transmission quality and not my reception quality). I'll see if I can ask someone around here who knows more about the programming than I do to set one of those (or all of them) to alert when monitoring.

Is there a reason you think my HT750 (even though it's old) will get better reception than a scanner? I understand what people have said about the internal antenna of the voice pagers, and that makes sense, but both my scanner and HT750 have external antennae. Wouldn't the scanner, which is newer, do slightly better? Or is this the classical misconception of newer = better? (Also, I have a feeling that these radios predate 1999, but I could be wrong. No one remembers when these radios were bought which indicates to me it was a long, long time ago!

Scanners are made to pick up usually from around 30MHz to 800+MHz, so the antennas and receivers for them are made this way, where as a radio's receiver and antenna are narrowed down to a certain band and made only for that band.

I don't know exactly when the HT750 began being manufactured, but I can't imagine it was much before 1999.

Your radio system probably uses all the same frequencies with different transmit PL codes to talk to different repeaters in your area. Your radio programmer could set all 3 of the frequencies up the same, so no matter which of the 3 channels your radio is on, it would still alert.