Pagers - Minitor Replacement?

[jantman]

I was recently talking with the captain of my volunteer ambulance corps, pretty much complaining that Minotor V's are costing us over $500, while my handheld ham radio (Vertex VX-7R) costs $200 and does everything I'd ever use and more.

So... do any companies make anything comparable to the Minitor for voice paging? Given what Icom, Vertex, etc. are putting in portables, I'm amazed that they haven't marketed one.

Oh... No, many of our members do not want to carry portables... or anything with an antenna. Most of out members also have no use for something that transmits.

Thanks,
Jason

[spareparts]

You might want to take a look at the Swissphone Quattrino. Pretty tough little pager.

If you don't need voice, there's a bunch of FLEX & POCSAG alphanumeric options, all for less then $350.00 per device.

[tvsjr]

I was recently talking with the captain of my volunteer ambulance corps, pretty much complaining that Minotor V's are costing us over $500, while my handheld ham radio (Vertex VX-7R) costs $200 and does everything I'd ever use and more.

We buy Minitor Vs with 3-year warranty, dual channel, and stored voice for about $450/pgr. If you're paying over $500/ea., especially if you aren't getting all those features, you're getting bent over.

Of course, that M5 is going to survive a whole lot better than your VX7, and be type accepted too.

So... do any companies make anything comparable to the Minitor for voice paging? Given what Icom, Vertex, etc. are putting in portables, I'm amazed that they haven't marketed one.

Just the Quattrino. With Kenwood's acquisition of Zetron (more alerting experience), I hope they build a Minitor competitor. Are you listening, Kenwood?

Oh... No, many of our members do not want to carry portables... or anything with an antenna. Most of out members also have no use for something that transmits.

Good... a portable radio is NOT a replacement for a pager.

[Param-A-Dic]

there are a couple companies that make alternatives. apollo makes one (forget the model) and there is the tribue911 pager. the road for the tribute pager has been a bit bumpy, but i just got an e-mail the other day saying they have ironed out all the problems and have re-released it. i sent in the one i had for a replacement, so we'll see.

along the portable radio lines...no, a portable may not be a replacement for a pager BUT...at IWCE icom anounced an up comming model of the F50 (which is only slightly lager than a minitor 5) that will have stored voice and vibrate built in, in addition to all the other options it has, including 2 tone decode (duh).
...just some more food for thought
-jonathan

[Tony Soprano]

Check out the VP200 by Apollo:

http://www.apollowireless.com/shtml/ite ... /1607.html

It's an M5 knock-off at a nice discount.

[FatBoy]

I work for a large distributor of Swissphone pagers and we have had great success with both the digital and voice units. We actually are doing a huge amounts of demos right now, so I know people are not 100% "happy" with the MIN V. PM me for more info. Thanks,FatBoy.

[Asst17-1]

I have just ordered some of the swissphone RE629 pagers for our dept. I will let you know our thoughts after we have had them for a while.

[wkr518]

I have just ordered some of the swissphone RE629 pagers for our dept. I will let you know our thoughts after we have had them for a while.

Did you get the Swissfon pagers yet? Any feedback? Only in VHF and UHF right?
Thanks
Wayne

[wkr518]

I have been using a demo Apollo VP200 voice/tone pager.It looks like a reverse engineered Minitor V.It takes the AAA rechargeable batteries and right now is not IS/FM rated.So I would not sell it to the Fire Service folks right now.Possibly EMS,Hospitals etc.
It is picking up alerts and voice messages quite well in the area/range I need it to.The voice quality is good or comparable to M5.
A bit of a heat issue on the pager when it is put in charger when dead.The batteries tend to be warmer than I am comfortable with.
2 Channel VHF with stored voice,I managed 5 days of battery life on a relatively active county EMS channel (4-5 calls per hour) programmed with 5 agency tone sets into it.If it was just IS/FM rated and did not heat up.
Anyone else played with these?
Wayne

[jantman]

The 5 hours sounds good. However, I highly doubt that I, or my organization, would consider a product that isn't IS. While we're an EMS organization, we're also a small one, and only have one crew on duty at a time (if that). The result of this is that, realistically, if we happened to be called to a hazardous scene, the first crew would probably be on scene as the second is toned out, and their pagers activate....

[firetech792]

The Apollo pager looks like a decent pager. However, the Swissphone, with it's LCD window on the front, will be broken in no time. (At least it looks like an LCD in the photo).

[Asst17-1]

I have just ordered some of the swissphone RE629 pagers for our dept. I will let you know our thoughts after we have had them for a while.

Did you get the Swissfon pagers yet? Any feedback? Only in VHF and UHF right?
Thanks
Wayne

Well we have had the SwissPhone RE629 for about 2 months now and here are my thoughts:

Size! - It is roughly the same size as a bravo800 alpha pager. I sometimes forget that I am wearing it.

Battery Life - The pager uses 1 NiMh AA battery and I get up to 5 days on a charge with moderate call volume. Also it is a standard battery that can be had for 3 bucks.

Sensitivity - it appears to be way more sensitive than the Min V. Side by side the RE629 picks up transmissions that do not come over the V.
But side by side with the old M II it seems comparable.

Controls - No knobs to break off. The 2 button interface is easy to use once you get used to it.

Construction - The case seems very sturdy but there is a rubber gasket that goes around that looks like it will not hold up too well. Although we have not
had any problems yet.

When I initially handed these out alot of the guys were hesitant giving up there M2/5 but now they won't give them up. These seems to be viable replacements for the minitor series. The ones we got have an issue with the scan feature. SwissPhone will be sending us replacements when they become available.

Overall we are very happy with them.

[aaknitt]

In the latest edition of MRT magazine, there was an advertisement for a new version of the IC-F50 (IC-F50V) miniature radio from Icom. It has built-in vibrate and voice storage for paging. Very similar features to the Relm RP3600. I think both of those radios are in the $350 ballpark. Vertex also has a small radio that can do paging, but no vibrate. Using a radio for paging is becoming more and more popular. It makes a lot of sense financially for small departments, but there are a lot of situations where I'd rather carry a pager than something with a big antenna sticking out of it.

[KB2ZTX]

Well lets try this again...

VP200 - Very nice pager. Issue I had was it heating with Ni-Mh highcapp batteries. With the original Ni-Cad batts no issues. As for IS, well I could go into 3 pages on why you dont need it in the fire service for the most part, but I wont here. I have them out to many customers that like them alot. I also have never had a customer ask if it was or not. My department is ordering 12 of them to replace MIII's.

F50V = Sweet little radio. Recieved mine last week, and other than the local EMS calls, I have not had a call to trial it. On the bench it does everything I want. If you use the same band for talking as paging, this may just be the model to have.

JAS

[escomm]

As for IS, well I could go into 3 pages on why you dont need it in the fire service for the most part, but I wont here.

Wrong. All it takes is one spark at one scene. Would you recommend turnouts made from Polyester too?

[KB2ZTX]

Wrong. All it takes is one spark at one scene. Would you recommend turnouts made from Polyester too?[/quote]

No I wouldn't, however in the greater north east and especially in CNY there are thousands of MIII Pagers in the departments. None are IS rated. The other thing people dont think of is the cell phone. Last I knew my cell phone as is many others are not IS rated. I'm not saying it isn't needed, what I am saying is in the world around me it doesn't happen. It would be great to have a IS pager, but if my alpha pager (which gets the call) and my cell are not IS, then what good is my voice pager to be IS.

Now in the world of carreer fire fighters, I know a few departments that have rules against carring cell phones or pagers at work. If this is the case then great, but if its the volunteer world then its alot different. Our department owns 3 MV pagers, and 74 MIII pagers, so with your analagy, we should get rid of all our MIII because they are not IS rated ? Now if I am going to a confirmed HAZMAT call then I sure as heck am going to leave everything at the station.....but then again...none of the county issued radios are IS, so I guess I can't talk to anyone either....

As I said in my earlier post, I dont disagree, I just see alot of issues with it in our area, and many areas I sell into.

[nmfire10]

You are both right. There are lots of good reasons to have an IS/FM pager. However, there are equally as many reasons why it probably won't make a difference.