Motorola And Swissphone

My department has just come to realization that Minitor V's....well, suck! We are looking into Swissphone Pagers. Do any of you have these and if so what are your thoughts on them and are they complex to use. What are the pros and cons of them?

Thanks!!

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Permalink Reply by Matthew Powers on July 14, 2010 at 1:43pm

Just my 2 cents,

Swissphone pagers ~$400
Motorola Page-able radio: ~$325
A radio in the hands of every responder: Well, that's a can of worms for you to figure out.

Whatever you think, it is probably worth a side by side comparison.

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Permalink Reply by Seth Yahraes on July 14, 2010 at 2:48pm

The problem is our county doesnt exactly approve of everyone to have a radio.

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Permalink Reply by Paul Montpetit on July 14, 2010 at 3:25pm

If disciplined radio traffic were possible then I would go radio...BUT, we all know that will never happen and we sure as hell don't need every person with radio talking just to hear themselves talk...Tne pagers are just fine for now...

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Permalink Reply by Seth Yahraes on July 15, 2010 at 2:26pm

I have a V now and its alright but so many have had problems. I loved my III that thing could survive a nuclear holocaust.

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Permalink Reply by Seth Yahraes on July 15, 2010 at 5:27pm

The idea of everyone having a radio is great. but the way our county is set up we wouldnt have enough radio ID numbers.

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Permalink Reply by Wayne Peterson on August 3, 2010 at 4:00am

Well its time for a change, in our county first 1 or 2 digits are Dept number followed by radio unit. ie: 264 is me. In both depts that I have been in radios are in most POVs we use a separate DPW freq to check in in route to station or direct leaving main channel for cheif to communicate with central. Works great we know proper equipment is getting to scene. We have 2 stations and large area to cover.

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Permalink Reply by John on August 3, 2010 at 11:17am

We have the Minitor V in our Dept and I have had mine for almost a year and so far I love it. the signal reception in our area is really great.

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Permalink Reply by Karr Quintero on August 3, 2010 at 12:04pm

we got the v's and a radio each, I seem to get odd useless static alot on my V, but its handy to carry around when you dont want to lug around a $3000.00 radio. also we never seem to have radio traffic issues between the other 17 departments in our county. During an event we get directed to a differnt fire ground then the main channel.

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Permalink Reply by Oldman on August 3, 2010 at 2:10pm

Who is doing the programming?

We had similar issues at first, but a minor change in the settings, (squelch I think) and we've quit having issues. Occasionally mine will chirp, but this is a rare occurrence.

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Permalink Reply by Bekks on August 3, 2010 at 2:44pm

We have the Minitor II, III, and V in use. Everyone that has or has had a II says it is the best for reception.

I have a "V" and my wife has a "III", they both work well so far (except for the III's batteries dieing without warning - hence the pagable Uniden-Bearcat scanner as backup in the house when I am not home with my V).

There are some members that have had reception problems, but it seems to be related to tower coverage and signal penetration and not the pagers themselves so much.
We have a variety of portable radios around, none of them pageable that I know of... but they never have trouble holding the repeater when being used.

Would be nice to hear from a swissphone pager user on the topic...

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Permalink Reply by Andrew Richmond on August 3, 2010 at 5:51pm

Seth,
At the present time I am carrying a duel channel Motorola V and have had issues with the charging base but none with the pager. While I was in Europe the department I was on switched from Motorola's to the Swiss Phone Quattro. I carried the pager for approx 4 years before I left. I never babied it and found that the pager was more than durable and extremely reliable. It seemed to have better reception than our previous pagers, it was of a size and shape that made it easy to carry, it is very loud with a good quality speaker, has several channels which can be programed for different groups, there are different tones available for each of the channels and the battery life was in my opinion exceptional. Both are quality pagers but as a personal preference I would rather have the Swiss Phone.