Pager & Portable Vs. Pager/Portable---Which Would You Rather Have?

My dept. is thinking about converting everybody over to a Pager/Portable but the only problem is that we cant find one with a repeat on it. The main reason is that it can be a hassle for the officers to carry a pager and a portable.
We will have the people that are not suppose to talk on it: will be disabled.
What do you think?

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Permalink Reply by Cody Little on March 7, 2009 at 5:51am

Well really to carry a pager and keep a portable in my turnout coat or just grab one off the truck when you get on scene. Espically if your going interior attack. so mainly just a pager and a portable near buy.

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Permalink Reply by R Griffin on March 7, 2009 at 7:05am

We use kenwood portables as our pager and radio due to fact the cost is almost half the price of a minitor 5. We programed a few to non-transmit ,some to transmitt fire bands only and the rest to transmit all the channels programed. Just be careful when using radio's as pagers especially for your entry team that you buy extra batteries or enforce them not to scan the frequencies all day. The batteries will last about 8-9 hours on a charge and may be a danger for the team inside not being able to communicate to command.(very dangerous situation) I personally like the pagers better because of the size compared to a portable but what works for our department may not work for yours and visa versa... BE SAFE and good luck!!!!

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Permalink Reply by Allen on March 7, 2009 at 7:55am

Well, your going to love this, we have 3 different things. 1 we have the pagers, 2 we carry a VHF Portable AND we have the 800 radios. The probies get the VHF Radio, officers get the 800s and the known responders get the pagers. There are issues with the 800 radios due to the fact the fire ground channels are not VHF. Dispatch can patch the 2 together but until they do it blows.
I tell all the Probies and people that do not have a pager that if they want to remember what the call is, they better have a pen and start writing as soon as the tones drop. But at the same time we do not have a real issue with it anyway cause if you are at the station when the tones drop then you have nothing to worry about cause someone will have a pager.
It also helps on the fire ground to have the pager and portable cause if you get another call while on a Fire Ground channel you wont miss it.

Pager & Portable Vs. Pager/Portable---Which Would You Rather Have?

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