Pagers and alert systems

[DCJPells 29]

Later this year or early next year, Dutchess County, NY will be eliminating the 36.46 simulcast and exclusively use UHF. I am looking at different in house and portable paging for our members. Currently we have old Plectrons which need to be replaced and Motorola Minitor II. Have you had good luck with other types? Would appreciate list of costs and vendors.

We do have Minitor IV and V but looking for other options.

[exmrvfc 0]

DC Pells,

Unforutnately, nothing has ever worked as well as the Minitor IIs as far as reliability and reception. The IIIs and IVs were not as reliable with worse reception. The jury is still out on the Vs. Anytime we have gone away from Motorola either for pagers or radios we have never been happy and always came back. Not much help but I have not seen a better alternative.

[TCD0415 26]

We have been using the Minitor Line and within the past year have been purchasing the Minitor V. Our take is that there is a vast improvement over the III & IV. Plus the Voice Playback in a handy function to have for double checking locations and type of call. The reception seems to be much better with these too.

I would recommend the Minitor V.

We use (Putnam) low band though. I cant vouch for the UHF Freq's.

[Guest]

I would recomend the Minitor V. In Bethel CT we just put up a UHF system and the Minitor V works great you can hear calls every where in town and a very good distance out of town.

[trauma74 111]

I have used every single model of Minitor pager since I became a member of my FD 16 years ago.

My Minitor 1 worked awesome. The Minitor 2 & 2 SV were great pagers. I had an amplified base charger for the 2 and it worked that much better.

The 3's & 4's were crap compared to any of the past models. The 4's were just a 3 in a different casing.

I got a 5 when they first came out. We have had a few issues with them, but I must say that I think that the reception is almost equal to the 2's & 2 SV's. The 5's are a little bigger and heavier, but I do not mind knowing my pager is on my hip. The batteries last pretty long. I can get 5 days without recharging. The battery used is like a cell phone battery.

We use VHF pagers here in Orange County, but from the people I talk to in other areas that use they UHF version I have heard very few problems.

Hope this helps out.

[trauma74 111]

The 5's are on State Contract. We use the VHF 2 channel stored voice version. I think they are just under $500. Our vendor is Goosetown Communications in Rockland County. We lease them and I think each pager is $20/month.

[Guest]

We have updated most of our pagers to the Minitor Vs and they seem to be working well. Battery life is excellent and we don't have reception problems. The voice storage also holds a lot of content if that matters to you.

We tried the Sceptar brand pagers, but they were not really as good as Motorola.

We put a simple Motorola alterting device in the firehouse. It is connected to the PA system. Think of it as a hard wired pager. That works extremely well. This alerter is connected to a backup power source.

I suggest that you review the NFPA standard on communications if you are concerned about ISO, redundancy, etc.

On the radio front, our Motorola HT 1250s are an excellent choice. I suggest that you get the heavy duty speaker-microphones as they are better able to stand up to wet conditions.

Command officers have Motorola XTS 2500 radios which give us the ability to talk on digital and analog simultaneously. This is a brand new radio, and after some software problems that Motorola has fixed, are working well. But, I would stick to the HT 1250 if you don't need both digital and analog.

The mobile radios are Motorola XTL 2500. They are excellent.

[JetPhoto 626]

Jeff,

I'm in Southern Dutchess and the departments I'm with both use Min V and 98% of them have no problems. A couple people have some reception/recording problems but that is going to happen anywhere. The pager is very reliable and the battery does last a few days, and my pager goes off several times a day. I recommend them.

On a similar note, we will have to replace our building alerting system that we currently have to UHF from our current low band system. Does anyone have any recommendations on a unit that will activate with tones and reset after a few minutes?

BTW - Dutchess dispatch on low band is 46.36 not 36.46

[DCJPells 29]

For the building, I have two that I am trying. Instalert out of NJ (http://www.instalertusa.org/index.html) and the Federal Signal Informer. Both seem to work. The informer has a relay for our lights system.

Yeah 46.36. That what happens when the mind and hands dont work well.

We do have M5's and about to order more and trying to see other flavors and experience.