Just a schmuck with a handheld

[Lauri-CoyoteFrostbite]

"..........What's a pager?" he asked............"

Pagers ! may even their memory fade ~!

I bet there are some reading this that haven't a clue about just what a nasty device a pager was......

So here is a personal history-------

A pager was a evil instrument of Satan, ....period !

it was designed to ruin a date or a nice quiet evening.
I had to carry one during my early years- and the way it worked, Kiddies, (you old farts can stop reading here) -was this little bauble was a radio receiver that had a unique calling tone. Mine always had a "service" that someone called that wanted to contact me, the 'service' would then 'page me"-- usually at the most awkward times with a beeping tone (they were also called 'beepers") that erupted suddenly like a dump truck was about to back up over me.
And like I said, that could happen at the most----ah, "awkward" moments
I would have to call in and get my message, or some 'phone number to call.... very few of my pages ever merited the bloody interruptions this caused, I had to assume it was always important, and then to add insult to injury, I had to go find a telephone to call into my "service."

What ?.... no cel'phones?

________________________________________________________________________

Carrying a pager was a status symbol-- like you were some sort of big cheese (and I could understand that if you were in medicine or an emergency service etc.)--- but for a mediocre schlub like me, the novelty wore off fast in the first 48 hours.

No warm fuzzy feelings here


Lauri
.

 

[mmckenna]

On call 24x7 before cell phones meant a pager.

There were -some- nice things about pagers:
Coverage was not 100%, so the "I must have been out of range" was a valid and acceptable excuse for not answering
Since it was receive only, message delivery was "best effort", which meant it didn't always go through.
No way to reply without access to a phone, so "I couldn't find a pay phone" was another totally valid excuse for not answering.
Ran for weeks off one AA battery.
No distracting games/internet.
A heck of a lot more durable that most cell phones.
Had one job, did it reasonably well.

Pet peeves on pagers: People that assumed you knew which area code they were in and just sent you the 7 digits. I lived in an area that had 4 area codes in the immediate area and there was no way I was calling random people to see if they were the ones that called.

I hung on to a few of my old ones and have them here in my office. Including that one that came out just at the time cell phones were taking off that would do two way paging. I could pull up very short news articles on it.

 

[k7ng]

Hearing protection was something I never cheeped out on.

In olden days, enlisted chumps in the uniformed services didn't have a lot of say about what they got for PPE. Hard rubber earplugs on the rifle range son't knock the dB's down very far. I suppose I could have gotten better ear protection for when I was outside during flight ops, but that might be another discussion.
And I agitated for a high-noise environment headset for the engineer on the fire engine, but that never got very far.
Water under the bridge.

Hearing aid technology is improving constantly...

 

[Lauri-CoyoteFrostbite]

Oh yes !.... the ways to avoid the the pages.
"I was out of range.....my battery was dead.... I couldn't find a pay 'phone......"
What I generally did when I was on-call was call my "service" and explain I was in a fringe area, but I did have a telephone. If they wanted me, they could call me at that number - and then I turned off the beeper. It didn't stop the messaging but I wasn't being jolted by the ####! thing going off --and I got my messages directly from a person.

.

 

[ladn]

Beeper pagers and rotary dial pay phones are things that the younger generation only hear about in legends passed down from the elders!

I never had to carry a pager (fortunately), but I did have to send pages to staff. We had alphanumeric pagers, so at least I could generate a semi-cohesive text message.

Conversely, in those candle lit days before cell phones, I frequently had to use pay phone (many with rotary dials!) to send and receive confidential information. News photography was (and still is) very competitive and we all monitored each others' radio channels. These were the times of conventional FM analog systems and encryption wasn't practical. If we had to exchange info on a hot news story, the only practical way was to find a corner pay phone and pray it (1) was working, (2) wasn't covered in bio hazard material, and (3) wasn't in use or under the watchful eye of a hooker or drug dealer.

The eventual migration to Nextel and cell phones put an end to all that, and eventually our conventional radio system. I still have an indestructible P200 handheld that converted nicely to ham radio and Micor, Mitrek and Mocom 70 mobiles that weren't worth the trouble of converting.

 

[bharvey2]

Ah yes, the ever popular pager of years past. In my last cleanout pass of the ubiquitous "junk drawer", I found my last one. Man, that seems like a lifetime ago. I suppose for some, that is a lifetime.

On a similar note, when I first got one, I was doing a lot of electrical work. Given the usual environment, I had mine set to vibrate since I wouldn't be able to hear it go off. I lost track of the number of times I jumped a foot or two in the air when it went off because i thought I might have come in contact with a live circuit and was getting shocked. Oh yeah good times.

 

[k6cpo]

Don't say that to an audiophile. I have read some very scathing reviews on the audio reproduction qualities of the Beats devices on some audiophile forums. To some of them they ARE the baofengs of headphones.

Those reviews probably come from the same people that think a set of $2000 gold cables makes their music sound better. I submit that the average individual can't tell the difference.

I have a pair of the top of the line Beats Pro headphones and while they sound good, they are the heaviest, most uncomfortable headphones I have ever worn. I just don't use them.

 

[prcguy]

The average listener can absolutely hear the difference between cables. The actual problem is very few stereo system will reveal the differences, which get lost in the preamp, power amp or speakers. I had the most wonderful time with a system that could reveal all the minute differences in cables and equipment. It was so good a friend of mine, a grammy award winning recording engineer took many of his recordings to the guys house and remixed the recordings to correct some things he could not hear on his own studio equipment.

Somewhere I have a picture of this system that was assembled in Montecito, CA and the guy spent years tweaking it to perform at its best. The speakers were all hand tested JBL with four 15" woofers in a horn loaded low frequency enclosure that was huge and that was just for one low frequency side there were eight 15" woofers total. The owner bought dozens of speakers and hand matched them all for identical performance. The system was also very efficient and the output of a tiny Sony Walkman connected to the speakers would fill the room with a good amount of audio. The soundstage it produced went way beyond the speakers and was almost 3 dimensional.

Anyway, this system could reveal differences in most anything you connected to it and the differences were very obvious in most cases between RCA, speaker and power cables, etc.

Those reviews probably come from the same people that think a set of $2000 gold cables makes their music sound better. I submit that the average individual can't tell the difference.

I have a pair of the top of the line Beats Pro headphones and while they sound good, they are the heaviest, most uncomfortable headphones I have ever worn. I just don't use them.

 

[AK9R]

And, here I thought we were talking about schmucks with handheld radios.

 

[iMONITOR]

Baofengs have absolutely earned their scorn.

Baofengs earn 5 POOPS! People used to put down my YUGO car too!

 

[W2JEL]

Baofengs earn 5 POOPS! People used to put down my YUGO car too!

Baofengs and High Point Firearms for the low budget prepper

 

[k7ng]

And Wolf ammo for that High Point.

 

[wa8pyr]

FWIW, I picked up an IC-4AT in an estate sale. I need to power it up (I'm sure the batteries are dead, stone dead, deceased, shagged out, passed on, ceased to be, bereft of life, not even pining for the fjords) and see if it still works. I suspect that it does.

Is is a Norwegian Blue IC-4AT????

Baofengs and High Point Firearms for the low budget prepper

Hi-Point is an excellent example of something which unfairly gets a bad rap. I have two and they're excellent, quite well built, rugged, reliable, and a lifetime warranty. Of course, I now have higher-end stuff as well, but back when I was paying off college loans, Hi-Point was just the ticket.

I can't say the same for Baofeng; they're fine for what they are, but in many ways they deserve their bad reputation.

 

[W2JEL]

Is is a Norwegian Blue IC-4AT????



Hi-Point is an excellent example of something which unfairly gets a bad rap. I have two and they're excellent, quite well built, rugged, reliable, and a lifetime warranty. Of course, I now have higher-end stuff as well, but back when I was paying off college loans, Hi-Point was just the ticket.

I can't say the same for Baofeng; they're fine for what they are, but in many ways they deserve their bad reputation.

I only say that due to my experience with the average Hi - Point owner , their carbines are pretty good for the money. Should have said for the prepper on a budget. There is a place even for Baofengs.

 

[Boombox]

Re: Pagers: I used to tune in the frequencies on the VHF Low Band just because it was about the only thing on that band. Bizarre noises. Around 49 mhz was the cordless phone frequencies... Another anachronism from the late 80s, just like beepers and analog cell phones.

RE: handhelds: It's sad if anyone is looked down upon because of their equipment. Not everyone can afford top dollar stuff. If a radio gets a readable signal out without jamming other services, what's the beef?

 

[Falcon9h]

Re: Pagers: I used to tune in the frequencies on the VHF Low Band just because it was about the only thing on that band. Bizarre noises. Around 49 mhz was the cordless phone frequencies... Another anachronism from the late 80s, just like beepers and analog cell phones.

RE: handhelds: It's sad if anyone is looked down upon because of their equipment. Not everyone can afford top dollar stuff. If a radio gets a readable signal out without jamming other services, what's the beef?

THANK you! Fixed income from no school and poor choices in the past. So that means CCR's instead of Harris/Motorola. Young people reading this: go to school!!

 

[PACNWDude]

In olden days, enlisted chumps in the uniformed services didn't have a lot of say about what they got for PPE. Hard rubber earplugs on the rifle range son't knock the dB's down very far. I suppose I could have gotten better ear protection for when I was outside during flight ops, but that might be another discussion.
And I agitated for a high-noise environment headset for the engineer on the fire engine, but that never got very far.
Water under the bridge.

Hearing aid technology is improving constantly...

Working on ballistic missiles in the early 1990's, Wing Job Control issued these huge Motorola pagers that had a voice recording that said "Call Wing Job, Call Wing Job (Control)".......where the wearer was then expected to find the nearest pay phone and call Wing Job Control. This meant you were tied to base or possibly the local mall, unless you had a 5 watt bag phone. These pagers had been so beat up and duct taped back together, it was common to see someone have them come off the belt, spreading batteries, battery cover, belt clip and the rest of the pager all over the floor.

Motorola StarTac phones replaced these, and were phased in over a year or so. I recall a time when I was in my car at the Dining Facility and a woman was giving me dirty looks a couple of cars away. I was using the cell phone "hands free" kit to speak with Wing Job Control. After getting out of the car, I made the "phone" hand sign to the woman, as she was just staring at me for talking to myself in an otherwise empty car. Still, better than carrying the pager (that was the size of a Walkman cassette player).