Unication Receiver

[DSC45]

Hello! I've recently took interest in the Unication G5 Receiver for monitoring in the Central Jersey, Somerset County police & fire.

I found that M & M Communications is my nearest dealer for sales & service, plus they will program the pager for my needs.

Does anyone have any thoughts good or bad for the Unication Pagers?

Thanks in advance for your help !

 

[markjrenna]

One word... OUTSTANDING!

OK more... Keep in mind it is not a traditional scanner. But there is nothing better than a Unication for P25 and NJICS. Period.

 

[RadioDitch]

OK more... Keep in mind it is not a traditional scanner.

Not yet at least, but beta won't last forever.

 

[DSC45]

Nor will I, 75 years old and still enjoy my monitoring public Service radio. I am intrigued by these Unication Pagers, but the programing has me bewildered, not a clue. Can program Uniden x36HP's successfully.

Thanks for the comments very much appreciated.

 

[rr60]

Don’t think twice, an outstanding receiver. Only decision to make is G4 or G5.

The new 1.3 FW permits TG hold and delete. Suggest spending sometime with a spread sheet and fill all 8x8 or 64 possible slots.

Unication has a profile sharing site. Take a look at some Somerset and NJ profiles using the PPS.

 

[mshumeyk]

The Unication are high quality receivers that are extremely durable. I also had concerns about programming but this past spring I bit the bullet and bought a G5. I have a couple of years to go before retirement but we bought our retirement home in south Jersey in an area where many agencies are switching to the NJICS and we have been spending a fair amount to time there. Performance on the NJICS is flawless. If you are active, it is easy to carry, has great battery life, and has loud and clear audio so much easier to hear in higher noise environments than other scanners. (I have been scanning since my first Regency 8 channel crystal scanner in the early 70's). I recently picked up a G3 to allow monitoring of the few agencies in my current locale that are on UHF rather than VHF like most other agencies. We are supposed to go over to a UHF P25-2 system in a year which was a good excuse to get the G3. Programming really isnt that difficult once you play around with the software. I suggest you learn even if you get it programmed as you may want to customize it a bit or adapt to changes in the NJICS system like the site number change in Cape May. My G5 performed well on the Somerset 700 system when I was at a function in Basking Ridge/Bernards a couple of weeks ago. I don't know much about the Somerset system but I know some agencies use the UHF system and some the 700mhz system. Both the G3 and G5 do highband, but the G3 does UHF and the G5 700-800. Make sure you get the right unit.

 

[DSC45]

Thank you all for the great information here ...

 

[blackbelter]

The best device to monitor P25 period. My portable Scanner feels like a toy compare to my G5.
G5 is my only go to daily unit. I was able to easily program it.

 

[edisonfire]

I love the Unication G5 for how it handles P25, buts lets face it, it has its own limits. As an example lets look at Middlesex County NJ. There are PD/FD that operate on the Middlesex County TKD system. Woodbridge has their own TKD system, so you could be blissfully unaware of a major incident because you're listening to the wrong TKD system. Throw in that one of the county's busiest cities New Brunswick FD operates on NJICS. Plus other towns are on their own frequencies. Edison is on its own TKD non-P25 system, Piscataway, Old Bridge and East Brunswick have their own TKD systems. I know this speaks to how NJ and its towns/cities function as a whole versus a Unication issue. Unication does a great job at what they do. I don't own a SDS100 but on a quiet evening it would be great to hear everything in a specific area

 

[mdsxfire]

I love the Unication G5 for how it handles P25, buts lets face it, it has its own limits. As an example lets look at Middlesex County NJ. There are PD/FD that operate on the Middlesex County TKD system. Woodbridge has their own TKD system, so you could be blissfully unaware of a major incident because you're listening to the wrong TKD system. Throw in that one of the county's busiest cities New Brunswick FD operates on NJICS. Plus other towns are on their own frequencies. Edison is on its own TKD non-P25 system, Piscataway, Old Bridge and East Brunswick have their own TKD systems. I know this speaks to how NJ and its towns/cities function as a whole versus a Unication issue. Unication does a great job at what they do. I don't own a SDS100 but on a quiet evening it would be great to hear everything in a specific area

This is definitely a Jersey interop issue, I have 2 G5’s one is running 1.4 beta and as with even a SDS100 any receiver that has to look for a CC every time it switches systems is going to miss traffic, so you end up with half conversations at best. The system scanning works good on the beta 1.4 and I only have it parked on a system for 2 seconds before it scans to them next and only scanning 2 systems I miss a lot of traffic, just the nature of the beast when switching TRS it would be nice if everyone went to the county system, a few more are going little by little bit we will never have everyone

 

[Dan_M]

Check out East Cost pagers!

East Coast Pagers - Your Emergency Alerting Specialists

East Coast Pagers is a Unication Pager Dealer, a Swissphone Pager Dealer, and an Apollo Pager Dealer specializing in the Unication G1, Unication G2, Unication G3, Unication G4, and Unication G5 Pagers. We also specialize in Swissphone sQuad Pagers.

www.eastcoastpagers.com

Dan

 

[IAmSixNine]

I love the Unication G5 for how it handles P25, buts lets face it, it has its own limits. As an example lets look at Middlesex County NJ. There are PD/FD that operate on the Middlesex County TKD system. Woodbridge has their own TKD system, so you could be blissfully unaware of a major incident because you're listening to the wrong TKD system. Throw in that one of the county's busiest cities New Brunswick FD operates on NJICS. Plus other towns are on their own frequencies. Edison is on its own TKD non-P25 system, Piscataway, Old Bridge and East Brunswick have their own TKD systems. I know this speaks to how NJ and its towns/cities function as a whole versus a Unication issue. Unication does a great job at what they do. I don't own a SDS100 but on a quiet evening it would be great to hear everything in a specific area

While i am not up there its not an issue of how unications handles it. Its how the user wants to monitor so much. So saying it has its own limitations is from an individual perspective. Otherwise you can say an APX has its own limitations and a KNG2 has its own limitations.
The device works great for whats its meant to do. But the more you want to scan the more likely you are to miss stuff. Then you add in different cities on different systems and it compounds the issues. Simple fix, the more you want to hear the more devices you need.
I learned that a long time ago. Sure it requires more money but then you will miss less and you wont be complaining about how your 1 device missed traffic on a different system or what ever the scenarios may be. I for one think its great that this company has listened to its scanner users and are willing to work with us to make a version of firmware that will scan across systems. Thats huge for the scanning community.

 

[mitbr]

Having one radio or scanner that is the jack of all trades might be convenient but it is not efficient.
Tim

 

[markjrenna]

Unfortunately this is the truth.

Having one radio or scanner that is the jack of all trades might be convenient but it is not efficient.
Tim

 

[cavitt]

I'm playing around with programming one right now. Wow, it picks up our P25 Phase II channels like a champ.
But for those who have it, am I able to only monitor 64 TGs at one time? I have broken them up into zones (fire and police, etc) because our county has a TON of TG's. But it appears I can only monitor one zone with 64 max TGs at once. Does this sound right?

 

[jonwienke]

That is correct. Try using ProScan or some other logging tool to narrow down the most active talkgroups of interest, and program those.

 

[CastorLB]

If you set it to monitor you get all traffic but you can only have 64 TGs labeled for that knob.

 

[jpb]

Since this started as a "Central Jersey" discussion, I have a G5 (VHF+7/800). Anyone have a UNIPPS file they'd be willing to share with Monmouth County VHF, TRS and/or NJICS? Thanks!

 

[rr60]

Unication New Jersey Codeplug Sharing

Unication has a code plug file sharing hub up, for uploads and downloads. Quite a few from New Jersey. One I found very interesting. Login unicustomer password unication If you upload yours, would you post the link for that download in this thread too? Mine will be going up soon. Thanks...

forums.radioreference.com

 

[SurgePGH]

Don’t think twice, an outstanding receiver. Only decision to make is G4 or G5.

The new 1.3 FW permits TG hold and delete. Suggest spending sometime with a spread sheet and fill all 8x8 or 64 possible slots.

Unication has a profile sharing site. Take a look at some Somerset and NJ profiles using the PPS.

Where is the profile sharing site?

If only we could get multiple conventional channels under one knob position for scanning purposes!