• To anyone looking to acquire commercial radio programming software:

    Please do not make requests for copies of radio programming software which is sold (or was sold) by the manufacturer for any monetary value. All requests will be deleted and a forum infraction issued. Making a request such as this is attempting to engage in software piracy and this forum cannot be involved or associated with this activity. The same goes for any private transaction via Private Message. Even if you attempt to engage in this activity in PM's we will still enforce the forum rules. Your PM's are not private and the administration has the right to read them if there's a hint to criminal activity.

    If you are having trouble legally obtaining software please state so. We do not want any hurt feelings when your vague post is mistaken for a free request. It is YOUR responsibility to properly word your request.

    To obtain Motorola software see the Sticky in the Motorola forum.

    The various other vendors often permit their dealers to sell the software online (i.e., Kenwood). Please use Google or some other search engine to find a dealer that sells the software. Typically each series or individual radio requires its own software package. Often the Kenwood software is less than $100 so don't be a cheapskate; just purchase it.

    For M/A Com/Harris/GE, etc: there are two software packages that program all current and past radios. One package is for conventional programming and the other for trunked programming. The trunked package is in upwards of $2,500. The conventional package is more reasonable though is still several hundred dollars. The benefit is you do not need multiple versions for each radio (unlike Motorola).

    This is a large and very visible forum. We cannot jeopardize the ability to provide the RadioReference services by allowing this activity to occur. Please respect this.

How will narrrowbanding affect pagers?

Status
Not open for further replies.

Batwings21

Completely Banned for the Greater Good
Banned
Joined
Apr 19, 2007
Messages
56
Not reliably, it will have half the audio being fed into the tone detector and when people pop up on the new splinter channels they will interfere.
 

dixie729

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Jan 12, 2008
Messages
429
Location
Daviess Co., KY
So... Will the Minitor II work after the narrow band switch the way they do now on wideband or will they be paper weights.
 

KD0NDO

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
May 25, 2009
Messages
424
i dont think they are going to narrow band the paging channels
 

SteveC0625

Order of the Golden Dino since 1972
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Oct 24, 2009
Messages
2,795
Location
Northville, NY (Fulton County)
i dont think they are going to narrow band the paging channels

There are a few paging channels that are not affected by the narrowband mandate, but the grand majority of Minitors are used on fire and ems channels that are affected by the mandate. I suspect that there may be a few that are used in other applications, but even then the frequencies are almost assuredly covered by the mandate.

The Minitor was not ever intended to be a pager operating on the old tradional paging systems. It started life as a pager (the old Director I) and was modified to tone and voice with monitor capability to give fire and ems people an alerting pocket monitor.

Thus any discussion of Minitors really doesn't pertain to those paging frequencies.
 

grem467

Member
Joined
Dec 19, 2002
Messages
884
Location
Houston, TX
Bottom line is that if you are paging on a Part 90 frequency, you have to narrowband. If you are Part 22, you do not.
 

RKG

Member
Joined
May 23, 2005
Messages
1,096
Location
Boston, MA
The effect is this: If one is operating on a Part 90 channel subject to rebanding and rebands, and if on the same channel one uses Minitors or similar QC-based pagers that are not (or cannot be) converted to narrowband, it will be as if the level setting at which the QC tones are transmitted is reduced by half. Likewise, if the pagers are programmed to require PL as well as QC, the level at which the PL is transmitted will be reduced by half.

In general, most QC tones are transmitted at pretty high levels (about 0 dB relative to max voice or about 100% of max deviation). Just as a guess, I'd guess that most Minitors would still be able to hear the QC tones. However, PL is transmitted at a much lower level (deviation equals between 500 and 750 Hz on a wide band channel, or half that on a narrow band channel, or about 15% of max deviation). Also as a guess, I'd guess than many Minitors would fail to decode PL.
 

GTR8000

NY/NJ Database Guy
Database Admin
Joined
Oct 4, 2007
Messages
15,417
Location
BEE00
If one is operating on a Part 90 channel subject to rebanding and rebands

Narrowbanding, not rebanding. Rebanding affects 800 MHz frequencies only, which Minitors do not operate on.

Likewise, if the pagers are programmed to require PL as well as QC, the level at which the PL is transmitted will be reduced by half.

However, PL is transmitted at a much lower level (deviation equals between 500 and 750 Hz on a wide band channel, or half that on a narrow band channel, or about 15% of max deviation). Also as a guess, I'd guess than many Minitors would fail to decode PL.

Minitors do not have PL capability, they operate CSQ, so none of this is applicable.
 

radioman2001

Member
Joined
Mar 6, 2008
Messages
2,974
Location
New York North Carolina and all points in between
Not entirely true about Part 90, I know of at least one licensee who has requested and received a waiver for wide band paging on a UHF channel. There are probably others, and if your department pages on Low Band that doesn't have to be N.B. either.
While I havn't bench tested any Minitor I for N.B. I have done it for the Minitor II through IV and all decode the paging tones with no problems, the main issue will be as said when someone is using the adjacent channel some time in the future. If you are on a P.S. channel and on VHF the likelyhood for interference is low since the co-ordinators are going to handle the licensing of the splinter as if it were still wide band and the separation of transmitters is going to be significant. Licensing for UHF is going to be different, as they were already spaced for narrow band. The interference is all going to depend on how close you are to an adjacent frequencies transmitter.
If you want some more history about the Minitor I and Director, I know our shop at the behest of Motorola H.Q. in New Jersey actually had us modifiy a LOT of Directors( and a lot of Page Boy II's also) to monitor the frequency, long before the Minitor I came out in 1977. I suspect that may have been one of the reasons for it's release.
 
Joined
Mar 2, 2005
Messages
1,915
Location
parma,ohio
i had a minitor-3 last year then got a minitor-5 so i'm ready when our department does the change to narrowband i can have my pager re-programed for narrowband.
 

GTR8000

NY/NJ Database Guy
Database Admin
Joined
Oct 4, 2007
Messages
15,417
Location
BEE00
I have a Minitor II (3 of them actually) that do PL decode, not CSQ.

Yes, there was a PL version that was very rare. However there was no model that had both PL and tone alerting capability within the same unit.

I was replying in the context of the OP's question, assuming he was referring to a tone-alert model when he said "pick up pages". I was also responding directly to RKG's comment of "if the pagers are programmed to require PL as well as QC", which is not possible to have both.

I should've been more clear with my answer, sorry about that.
 

902

Member
Joined
Nov 7, 2003
Messages
2,620
Location
Downsouthsomewhere
For VHF, the ONLY two public safety frequencies that do not need to narrowband are:
152.0075 and 157.4500 MHz - ONLY.

These have typically been used for in-hospital paging, but many counties have jumped on them and are using them for wide-area coverage.

If your volley squad is alerted on 155.2050, or your fire department is alerted on 154.3550, your agency must narrowband those.

There is a third frequency - 163.2500 - that HAS TO be narrowbanded because it is "borrowed" from the NTIA and is subject to their (more aggressive) narrowband mandate.
 

SteveC0625

Order of the Golden Dino since 1972
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Oct 24, 2009
Messages
2,795
Location
Northville, NY (Fulton County)
IF you Narrowband a said freq wont the pagers (min 1/2/3) be off frequency and the audio on the reciever sound off and garbled????

If the pager was slightly off frequency to begin with, narrowbanding might aggravate that a bit.

However, it's been repeatedly reported that the most common problem associated with using a WB pager in a NB system is reduced audio levels.

If a WB pager performed marginally due to distance and terrain, NB will probably make that worse.
 

GTR8000

NY/NJ Database Guy
Database Admin
Joined
Oct 4, 2007
Messages
15,417
Location
BEE00
IF you Narrowband a said freq wont the pagers (min 1/2/3) be off frequency and the audio on the reciever sound off and garbled????

The frequency doesn't necessarily change once it's "narrowbanded". That's a common misperception. Narrowbanding refers only to the reduction of bandwidth from 20/25/30 kHz down to 12.5 kHz. The center frequency does not change.

Not to be confused with many of the "new" VHF frequencies being licensed, which are easily identifiable by the "5" in the fourth position to the right of the decimal (or the fifth position for four frequencies in the 154 range). The fairly recent addition of those frequencies interspersed between the "old" 15 kHz spaced frequencies is what created the 7.5 kHz spacing in the VHF spectrum. Unfortunately, people usually refer to those frequencies as "the new narrowband frequencies", which is what causes confusion with respect to the narrowband process.

155.310 can be "narrowbanded" just the same as 155.3175 can. The frequency by itself is no indication of whether an agency is using 12.5 kHz compliant equipment or not.
 

902

Member
Joined
Nov 7, 2003
Messages
2,620
Location
Downsouthsomewhere
Just as a follow-on, the VHF channelspaces are 7.5 kHz apart and narrowband analog signals are 11.25 kHz wide. In other words, these new stations are wider than the channels that contain them. Once narrowbanding is completed and there are other systems licensed, having a "wideband" (20 kHz wide) Minitor may also receive other systems within range that are on the 7.5 kHz adjacent frequencies. Those may sound "off frequency" (because they are) and distorted to some extent. Usually coordinators try to put some geographic separation between these, but results vary between frequencies and coordinators. A Minitor 5 (or similar product, if there's any such animal) has a narrowband configuration which makes that passband tighter, and uses additional amplification to bring up the levels to the par of what a wideband signal used to be.
 

wkredick

Member
Joined
Apr 6, 2006
Messages
148
Location
Waterford,New York,USA
Had a local county switch to 12.5khz paging on UHF channels and they experienced less range,degrade of voice quality and lower volume on 12.5khz capable pagers ( Minitor Vs and other brands).
County also had to shuffle around and re-arrange some Tone pairs to make it work. I think I heard the Plectron type tones were having problems opening up the pagers and alerting them.
Things seem to have improved a bit over the last few months however with alerts getting over and opening pager tones, or tones opening up the pagers to receive the alerts.
 

dave90000

Member
Joined
Dec 24, 2008
Messages
53
Location
Greenbrier Arkansas
We have several minitors (versions 1 - 5) and they work perfectly fine on narrowband. They work good enough that we have not bothered changing the 5's to narrowband.
 

Duster

Supposedly Retired...
Database Admin
Joined
May 16, 2003
Messages
798
Location
Northwest KS
...County also had to shuffle around and re-arrange some Tone pairs to make it work. I think I heard the Plectron type tones were having problems opening up the pagers and alerting them.
Things seem to have improved a bit over the last few months however with alerts getting over and opening pager tones, or tones opening up the pagers to receive the alerts.

We had the same problem with pagers in our operational area when we narrow-banded. We dispatch for multiple agencies in a very large 3-county area, ranging in altitude from near sea level to alpine valleys. The agencies use a varied mess of alerting receivers, but the vast majority are Minitor V's and a few Swissphones. After much experimentation, we discovered that tones below approximately 200hz would not consistently alert after narrowbanding. So, we changed those agencies' tones that had any tones below 200hz, and the problem solved itself. I don't know the specifics as to why, but that mostly eliminated our alerting problems after narrowbanding our command nets.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top