Motorola Minitor III problems

[zackman1801]

Hello all, first let my start off by introducing myself. My name is Zack, I am a volunteer firefighter/EMS working from Maine. I am also a full time student studying Fire science and Paramedicine. I work for 3 different departments and love my job.
But now to the problem.
My Minitor III pager that was issued to me by my smaller volunteer dept in the town i live in recently stopped working correctly out of the blue. It will no longer alert for my station tones. It scans, and recieves just fine. I can hear anything dispatch says and i can also hear my tones go out, but they will not alert the pager. This is specifically a problem at night since the pager will not open for my tones because it has not been alerted, so i am forced to either scan all night or just miss calls.
What can i do to remedy this problem?
The likely hood of me getting another pager is very slim, I have had bad luck with them and crushed one in an accident earlier this year and am on my second one. Both are hand me down pagers and are more than likely 10 or more years old.

Thanks for any input that you can give me.
Zack

 

[theclinton]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this is a pretty common problem with the minitor 3's. I believe it has something to do with pins lifting up on the decoder board. I don't know how much it would cost to fix it.

What band split is they pager on? Check Ebay. There is usually always VHF high-band pagers on there; and most are at a reasonable price. My advice, if you can, is to purchase a good old Minitor 2. Most are fairly cheap, and most work excellent. If you like computer programmable pagers, try a Minitor V. While these are pretty expensive, they are a very good pager. The 3's and 4's are a good pager if working properly, but they do seem to fail often.

Hope this helps......

 

[sfd119]

Go to your chief again. Having equipment that doesn't page doesn't do any good for the department. Tell him it receives fine, just won't alert.

 

[lucas2121]

I agree I bought a minitor II with amplified charger for $30 and had it re crystaled with two channels for 30-40 dollars. So $70 total and I have a very good pager that works better than most Vs.
Also I payed $100 for a completly referbeshed one and it works great.

 

[GTR8000]

Minitor III Fix - radioetcetera

 

[zackman1801]

I have tried the soldering trick shown in the link already, Im unsure if it works because we havent had any calls, and i dont have access to a tone test to ensure that it works. I can assure you though that i will not be issued another pager. I will attempt to fix this one at a reasonable rate, if i cant then i guess ill turn it back in and just go back to using only a portable radio.

 

[DieselFF918]

not sure of the cause of it, but I had the same problem with my Minitor 3. We had some Min 2 pagers, so I ended up with one of those for a while.

Btw, it is nice to know I am not the only one who has run over a pager, lol.

 

[davidgcet]

what portable do you have? you can get most of them programmed to do QCII on a channel. i setup all our conventional FD radios with a "page" channel so that they can simply turn to it at night and use the radio itself as their pager. the radio stays muted until the proper tones go out.

 

[zackman1801]

Right now i have a Cp200 which has a page channel on it. Although i dont have any way of knowing when we have calls while its charging, and its very hard to carry around when im working, or in stores and things. I dont like carrying it around all over creation because its big, bulky, and when it goes off its very loud. I missed the tone test because i was away, but the pager seems to be slowly getting worse. the audio quality has dropped and it seems to have less range now.