Scanners with Fire Tone Out

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Bherrington741

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Hey, I volunteer with a fire dept. And as you know, our pagers get damaged and lost very easy due to the job. Well turns out I've lost/broke to many, and now no longer have one. Can anyone tell me a good alternative scanner/pager that won't break the bank. The scanner could be a desk top one, just to wake me up. We use the two tone page. (Unsure what the actually name for it is, if you could tell me, it'd make googling it a lot easier :) ) I'm currently using a TYT UVF1 for alerts, and it's very unreliable. If anyone has information or suggestions, I'd love to hear them. Thanks in advance!
 

captclint

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bravo14

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Welcome to RR. BC346XT - The RadioReference Wiki and BCT15X - The RadioReference Wiki If you don't know your Tones, both have a search feature that will get you close enough to the correct tones, but it may require some effort to feret them out.

Like captclint mention ↑

I don't have those 2 radios you should be set for your station tone. You can put up to 10 stations on the same freq and scans them all. If your area has 2 different freq's it won't scan both freq's just one.
 

traumacop

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I used a BCT15X to get tone outs for our mutual aid departments and it works 95% off the time. The 5% is when there are multiple departments being toned. I'm actually thinking about using this for station alerting. Several of my guys use their icom f33gt for portable alerting. I don't think any hh scanner would hold up if your destroying pagers. My experience is that icom and Kenwood work slightly better for alerting then moto, but all 3 work well.

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krokus

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Contact United Communications, and ask how much it costs for a reconditioned Minitor 2.

Consider changing how you carry your pager, so you stop damaging them.

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W8RMH

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You can find a BCT15 on ebay for under $150, there are 3 on there now.

I carried a pager for over twenty years, as a FF, EMT, LE, K-9, SAR, SWAT, under all kinds of conditions and never, ever broke or lost one. You definitely need to review your carrying practices.
 
D

DaveNF2G

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How do you expect a relatively cheap, consumer grade scanner to survive where commercial pagers cannot?
 

1268

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Hey, I volunteer with a fire dept. And as you know, our pagers get damaged and lost very easy due to the job. Well turns out I've lost/broke to many, and now no longer have one. Can anyone tell me a good alternative scanner/pager that won't break the bank. The scanner could be a desk top one, just to wake me up. We use the two tone page. (Unsure what the actually name for it is, if you could tell me, it'd make googling it a lot easier :) ) I'm currently using a TYT UVF1 for alerts, and it's very unreliable. If anyone has information or suggestions, I'd love to hear them. Thanks in advance!

you could go with a radio/pager rather then just a pager and get more bang for your buck. Since we are in the narrow banding era..buying used pagers is risky.

If you really want to go the scanner route BR330T is solid... but please put it in a case !
 

DJ11DLN

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you could go with a radio/pager rather then just a pager and get more bang for your buck. Since we are in the narrow banding era..buying used pagers is risky.

If you really want to go the scanner route BR330T is solid... but please put it in a case !

+1 on this. Also, after having a lot of trouble with Minitor V's my department started replacing them with Swissphone RE729's. Less initial cost, definitely better "ears" (the Minitor V's were absolutely deaf in some areas, no coverage problems with these at all), and cheaper to repair too. They use a single AA rechargeable cell or you can use conventional ones in a pinch. Minitor V = $40 battery pack from Moto. Belt clip is part of the battery cover, costs like $12 for it; with a Minitor you have to send it in and that's a hundred bucks. So far (2+ years) they've been extremely rugged & reliable. I'm not getting a thing from Swissphone but we have just been extremely happy with them. IMHO, the Minitor IV was the last "good" Moto pager.

Check out Swissphone's ad in Fire Chief magazine. They'll loan you a unit, pre-programmed for your system, for up to a month to evaluate, no obligation at all. They let us have 2 and when we asked to keep 'em an additional month, they said, "Sure." Also, the extra features Moto charges more for (additional channels, scan, voice record) are standard and easy to program with these.
 

krokus

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+1 on this. Also, after having a lot of trouble with Minitor V's my department started replacing them with Swissphone RE729's. Less initial cost, definitely better "ears" (the Minitor V's were absolutely deaf in some areas, no coverage problems with these at all), and cheaper to repair too. They use a single AA rechargeable cell or you can use conventional ones in a pinch. Minitor V = $40 battery pack from Moto. Belt clip is part of the battery cover, costs like $12 for it; with a Minitor you have to send it in and that's a hundred bucks. So far (2+ years) they've been extremely rugged & reliable. I'm not getting a thing from Swissphone but we have just been extremely happy with them. IMHO, the Minitor IV was the last "good" Moto pager.

Check out Swissphone's ad in Fire Chief magazine. They'll loan you a unit, pre-programmed for your system, for up to a month to evaluate, no obligation at all. They let us have 2 and when we asked to keep 'em an additional month, they said, "Sure." Also, the extra features Moto charges more for (additional channels, scan, voice record) are standard and easy to program with these.

We tried those pagers, but some people had issues keeping track of the operating instructions.

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DJ11DLN

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We tried those pagers, but some people had issues keeping track of the operating instructions.

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Our experience was exactly opposite. The way we set ours up, they are very easy and intuitive to use. Takes maybe 5 minutes to bring a newb up to speed on them, including making the newb prove that they can operate it, change modes, change volume, and play back/delete stored messages. But then that is with 1 Dispatch channel and progged to respond to 1 set of tones. One of our guys is on another agency too and he's got both sets of tones (same Dispatch) in his...I'll have to ask him how the "radio guy" set up the controls. He doesn't seem to have a bit of trouble with it. I continue to recommend them. And they have far better "ears" than our dwindling supply of Minitor V's, which are literally dropping like flies. With our local Dispatch sometimes and in certain areas being a little iffy signal-wise (but the problem is on our end, of course, regardless of what a radio equipped with a sig meter says...), every bit of sensitivity is precious. These things have it.
 

1268

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One really neat option is the Unication G-1 pager... some cool youtube videos out there on it.
 
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