Just woundering out there what kind of pagers do you guys use out there? My company currently uses the Minitor II for firefighters but the upper ranking officers use the Minitor IV. Right now i have a Minitor III in the shop and its the only III in the station. So what do you guys use and have any suggestions on any good working pagers?
We have a mixture of Minitor II, III and IV pagers. I also have a Min V which I bought personally. The M IIs work just about as well as they did when we bought them 20 years ago. The IIIs were not too bad but the IVs have been troublesome. This is weird since the III and IV are almost identical internally except for the switches and knobs. Of the 30 M IVs we have more than half have gone back for repair.
I like the Minitor 5 which has stored voice even on low band, so in case you miss a call you can push the button and play it back. It also has a rapid charge battery and replaceable belt clip. I think it works almost as well as the II. Apollo Wireless sells pagers that are almost identical to the V but have slightly different case and battery, and I don't know how the prices compare.
Also, the other departments in our county all use Motorola Minitors, many III IV and Vs nowdays but still a lot of IIs out there.
Ive heard alot of the problems that the Minitor IV's have had like even alot of the guys have been complaining of alerts going off for the wrong station and a constant squelch noise after the dispatch is sent through. Im not sure if you guys have heard of this but it may be the pager joe was talking about, the TRIBUTE 9/11 looks good but i cant find any good info on it, heard of it?
Permalink Reply by lloyd on September 13, 2007 at 10:51pm
Our dept uses the Minitor V. It is a multi frequency pager with 4 settings. It is set up this way so we can have a normal audio page, a silent vibrate for situations like church or other meetings, an on scene frequency that we use so our working situations do not go through the repeater, and a back up frequency for a second incident if we have one so all our traffic is not on the same frequency. Our ambulance service that is separate from our fire dept. is on the same frequency as our repeaters. They respond to all our incidents on a regular basis, but in the event of a working fire or other, we do not want 2 tie up the repeater with all the fire gorund talk.. Hope this helps.
Currently we use alpha numeric. They are great because it gives you the text info of the call for reference. Only thing to remember to do is make sure the paging company gives your pages priority. If not, you could get stuck in alpha numeric holding hell, and your pages might get delayed. Didn't think I would like them at first, but now, they are so much more helpful than the minitors.
Our department uses 2's, 3's, 4's, and 5's.New probies get 2's or maybe a 3. Right now i'm a month away from the end of my probation and I've got a 4. Most everyone else has a 5 except for the guys who are off at college. As soon as my probation ends i will probably get a 5. I have gone through 3 Minitor 4's in a year mostly because of charger problems. For some reason the chargers overheat or something and fry the inside of the pager. We are slowly getting away from 2's and soon 3's also. We cant find anyone to work on 3's anymore for a reasonable price and no one in this area works on 2's at all. The 5's definitely are the best pagers we have. And i have noticed the very VERY annoying problem with the squelch after dispatch. Ours only do it if the pager is on vibrate though. It doesnt make for happy co-workers when your pager goes off and has a constant open squelch noise for a couple hours until i can turn it off.
My company currently uses IVs and Vs. I have been in a little over a year and this is my second IV... and I'm not even sure if it's going to last me.
Our entire county is supposed to go to a combination Minitor/Alpha system before 2009. Apparently all of the pagers are in stock... but without all of the communications towers functional, we won't be getting them.
Our department, and the two city Departments around us use Alpha Numeric pagers.
I have a Motorola advisor Gold, but newer ones are coming in.
I personaly like the pager I have as opposed to the newer ones as it seems to be more reliable, gives a low battery warning, the new ones stop recieving calls and has a louder alert tone.