Batboard

w8cmi

Mine was programmed for Motorola Group 2 so anything outside that group couldn't be done. Hence why you have to only enter 2 digits when you page.

You have the Moden 100. There is a look-alike version called the Moden 36 that further divided those tones into UPPER and LOWER for each tone group. I ...

w8cmi

How about two way radios integrated into (future) existing commercial ventures?

A digital radio in a police car that, in addition to having "private" public safety frequencies, uses Nextel or AT&T's cellular network to send pictures, data, video, etc. across the world.

Uploading a mug shot or a ...

w8cmi

What do you guys think about MA/COM stuff?

At one time, GE was the hands-down runner up to Motorola.

GE > Ericsson/GE > Ericsson > ComNet/Ericsson > MA/COM

Just curious.

By the way, Vertex mobiles ROCK. I don't have any recent Kenwood or EFJ experience.

I hated the ICOM stuff we installed ...

w8cmi

Where I am in FL they upgraded to P25 as well but page outs remained on VHF.

That's what I've seen in so many systems. Either the old dispatch channel is kept and slaved to the alert talkgroup, or a new "page out only" conventional 800/900 MHz channel is added which serves the same purpose ...

w8cmi

Cool! Thanks!!!

Anybody had any good or bad experiences with these?

w8cmi

Does anyone know of a (somewhat) wideband low band mobile antenna. I'm looking for 49 MHz business band and 6 meters on one antenna.

I'm not picky. I'll take a base-loaded trunk mount antenna or a quarter wave "tree banger" with the ball and spring or anything else that'll work with low SWR across ...

w8cmi

Not too much else I can add. Running the RG58 cable is pretty much standard. If you use a free-standing radio (hospital radio) in the patient compartment, make sure they run at least 1 RG58 cable to the switch area near the airway seat. If you use dual control heads on one radio, see if some type of ...

w8cmi

Hmmm ... call Zetron Technical Support?

w8cmi

Oh, you need the manual keyboard entry code.

Try this:

Y155 ... enter 9755 , then page
Y177 ... enter 9777 , then page
Y122 ... enter 9722 , then page
Y199 ... enter 9799 , then page
Y244 ... enter 9844 , then page

that's the Motorola Centracom format for Y cap codes. On many things, Zetron doesn ...

w8cmi

Nick,

Try here:

http://www.batlabs.com/qciitbl4.html

The Y codes are special high capacity paging codes. All the tones you listed are "all call" 8 second single tone format.

Y155 is 602.6 hZ - Athens All-Call
Y177 is 741.3 hZ - Glouster All-Call
Y122 is 441.6 hZ - Wellston All-Call
Y199 is 912 ...

w8cmi

North american is still alive and well.

North American used to make a helluva electronic siren. 58 watts, on par with the Federal Interceptor and the Dominator, but it had the "Riot" sound -- sort of a yelp superimposed on hi-lo. Very distinctive. And cool.

I never cared for anything from Mars ...

w8cmi

That is a classic.... that and a Q siren

How far the mighty have fallen.

It used to be Federal as the clear and indisputable industry leader ... and then all the also-rans lagging way behind, like North American, Smith & Wesson, Dietz, Mars, Signal-Stat, et. al.

Now it's a crap shoot, with ...

w8cmi

Nothing beats a Federal Beacon Ray Model 175.

The infamous 'hill light'.

Clear lens. Alternating clear and red sealed beams. Aircraft landing light bulbs work great!

Rock on.

w8cmi

It's on the shelf for now. There's a glitch in state funding for our wireless 9-1-1 conversion (a simultaneous project) and we had to divert about $57,000 to cover a necessary expense we hoped would be covered by a state grant. We've also changed EMA directors in the middle of the stream, and that's ...

w8cmi

Your next step is frequency coordination -- having one of the FCC's private channel-finding groups locate usable frequencies for your repeater. In the business radio service, there are many coordinators to choose from. I've had good luck using the Personal Communications Industry Association (PCIA ...

w8cmi

eBay usually sells these units for $250-$350 each, if in working order and clean.

w8cmi

Federal quit making great light bars about the time they retired the Twin-Sonic.

w8cmi

The Motorola MSR2000 and MSF5000 are both good units. Usually 100 watts, but not always. GE (Ericsson) Rangr, Delta and Orion models are more scarce, but are good quality fixed stations. The Kenwood TKR 720 (VHF) and 820 (UHF) are excellent desktop 50 watt repeaters. Motorola makes some decent ...

w8cmi

I'm a bit of a low band buff, and here is some seat of the pants advice:

Get a mobile radio. Now! :lol: :wink:

As others have mentioned, low band portables are horrid performers. Even wth a rubber duck on the top end of the band (45 MHz and up), you can't create enough of a "human body ground ...

w8cmi

It's been years since I've heard Columbus's system, but what you describe is what I remember. The original poster was from New Carlisle, and, at one time, one of those southwest Ohio counties used 2+2. Licking County (Newark) did too for fire paging, and maybe still does. I thought that may have ...

w8cmi

A table top station is a trunk-mounted mobile radio encased in a desk unit that contains the 120 VAC power supply, a base mic, and possibly DC or tone remote termination equipment.

http://www.barnettelec.com/f4-img6.jpg

The more traditional base is a cabinet mount arrangement, where transmitter ...

w8cmi

Atlanta uses DTMF.

DTMF and 2+2 (Quik Call I) are completely different formats.

w8cmi

If it's not actual DTMF, you're probably hearing the old 2+2 format, a.k.a. Motorola Quik-Call I. This was used to trip the old fire and air raid sirens, and worked with the Plectron boxes.

2+2 was viewed as a more secure way of encoding than just sending two single tones. The "tags" (sweep sirens ...

w8cmi

Excellent ideas. Thank you.

w8cmi

Perhaps a VHF-Hi repeater in the towns/cities, to allow for portable comms. Cross-band the VHF repeater to a low-band base to give low-band coverage outside of town.

I follow your logic. We had considered this ... even discussed it.

Have each vehicle set-up with both a VHF-Hi & low-band radio ...

w8cmi

Potential downsides: As you have noticed, fewer and fewer manufacturers support lowband. How long before nobody does? How long until your choice in equipment is one model?

As long as VHF low band is a licensable, working band of frequencies, I would think someone would provide equipment ...

w8cmi

Your first problem is money.

Agreed. We're supposed to be getting a percentage of sales tax money to fund the changeover. Something will change and new radios will be purchased. It's just a question of what frequency band we'll use. Very little of the existing equipment is narrow band capable, so ...

w8cmi

What brand/model base stations are you considering?

Damn the Micors were good. Last forever.

Probably the MA/COM Orion for primary bases, if they're still available in low band. 110 watts with all the bells and whistles, and they come configured to be a REAL base radio. I doubt there's much ...

w8cmi

I'm working with a rural county. About 450 square miles, rectangular shaped, county seat in the middle, various cities and towns throughout the county, rolling hilly topography with a few REALLY cavernous hollows and valleys.

Right now, public safety radio is a hodgepodge. The cities all run VHF ...

w8cmi

If the Moto route doesn't work for you, try a GE MLS low (29-42 MHz) split.

Look for model number MLS L 160 or 161.

Control E, baby, and you're good to go.

w8cmi

Figure $200-$300 in frequency coordination fees, plus another $155 to the FCC if you're applying for business band channels. If the forms are too intimidating to fill out yourself, you may be looking at another hundred dollars or so to hire a preparer.

The cheapest route is to fit yourself into the ...

w8cmi

I have a customer/friend who wants a programmable radio that will do his 49 MHz business band frequencies (48.96, 49.12, 49.16 MHz) and 6 meter ham repeaters on the traditional 53 Mhz (-1 MHz for TX) splits WITH PL capability programmable per channel. I've found a wideband mobile antenna that'll do ...

w8cmi

The only options that haven't already been discussed are getting some on-glass antennas (much better at 800 MHz than 150 MHz, by the way) and the can-style and/or "shark fin" low profile transit bus antennas. Pricey, but they work fine. I dunno ... Space 'em out, maybe consider a cowl mount for a ...

w8cmi

Another thing to consider is tone timing. Most of the Moto encoders do a 1 second (1st tone) and 3 second (2nd tone) sequence. At one time, Minitor pagers would "beep" for the duration of the second tone after a few milliseconds of sampling. If the second tone went for 8 seconds, you got 8 seconds ...

w8cmi

I'm not familiar with the Veetronix. You should probably call their factory support people and see whats up. 2688, 834 and 701 hZ are Plectron tones. Moto has Plectron reeds for pagers now, but, back in the old days, they didn't have an encoder that would do non-Motorola tones.

The old Plectron ...

w8cmi

The old Petroleum radio service has a bunch of 20K0F3E (FM) frequencies down around 25.0-25.1 MHz, mainly for oil spill cleanup and the like, and Forest Products has 29.71 to 29.79 MHz. Both are now available to any Industrial/Business licensee, if you're so inclined.

I think there's some old ...

w8cmi

I'm working with a customer in a rural, hilly area who wants basic base to mobile communication. I'm looking at low band and am wondering if other techs have good or bad experiences with certain ranges of frequencies in the low band range.

I'm looking at:

The 30-31 MHs business channels
The 35 MHz ...

w8cmi

Motorola VHF Maratrac in the truck.

A Cingular cell phone (that works about half the time) carried in my pocket.

You want me? Find me.

- Rick

w8cmi

Nick,

If you have the money, go with a repeater simulcast system and voted receivers. Anything less just lends itself to operator error -- either by a firefighter who isn't technically savvy with radio equipment or a dispatcher who doesn't understand how to manually steer a complex radio system.

I ...

w8cmi

The standard quarter wave antennas (6" spike) are fairly flat across a wide range of frequencies. I've had a lot of luck with them on VHF, going from 2 meters to 160 MHz with very little problem.

As others have mentioned, buy the good stuff. I'm a diehard Antenna Specialists and Decibal Products ...

w8cmi

Could you elaborate on what kind of "issues" you run into?
I've got a RANGR on 35-54 in my truck and have yet to ever have any issues with it or the S825-05 control head that it's plugged into. Albeit the first time around the software is a bit confusing, but if you know how to use it, it's not ...

w8cmi

Low band is still the greatest, especially if you're looking for solid, reliable long distance mobile-to-mobile or mobile-to-base communication in a rural area.

It sounds like you might want raw (100 watt +) RF power output and, as others have mentioned, a great antenna system. For the money -- and ...

w8cmi

If you're looking for a newer encoder that does QuikCall I tones, try and find a Zetron Model 25. If I recall correctly, the 25 could do QC1 and 2, GE Type 99, Reach, Bramco, Plectron, DTMF, POCSAG, GOLAY, burst tones and just about anything else out there. I believe the Model 25 was available in a ...

w8cmi

I need a Maratrac clamshell control head. I'm specifically looking for the one with "Off/Volume", "Scan (on/off)" and "Channel" knobs in an 8 channel arrangement. I was contacted off-list by a service guy who has a brand new Motorola HCN-4038A control head he says is similar to what I described ...

w8cmi

The mother ship of QuikCall I information:

http://www.policeinterceptor.com/emerg.htm

Where else but the Internet ...

w8cmi

This one is recorded on 158.070Mhz

Are you sure it's not 158.70 -- a longtime dedicated paging frequency?

I hear this stuff night and day there in our area.

The second one is a signalling from a vertex radio, does anyone know what is the name of this signalling?
http://home.nyc.rr.com ...

w8cmi

Thanks for the replies. I checked the switch and didn't find any visible separation. I tried pushing things together and got a couple of "beeps" from the radio, but no overall change in how the radio operates.

I realize I'll have to go back to Moto for reprogramming the ZONE switch -- which I DON'T ...

w8cmi

I'm willing to change heads and give this a try.

Dos anyone have a WORKING head like I described that you'd like to sell. I'd be happy to buy new in the box, if available.

PM or email [email protected]

w8cmi

I horse traded a VHF Maratrac and am having problems with the control head and channel scan. I have one of the older clamshell (A3?, A5?) control heads with three knobs: Off-Vol, Mode and Zone.

Off-Vol does as expected, Mode is an 8 position knob that apparently changes frequencies, and I have no ...

w8cmi

OK, here is one... What about an IN Band for 800 Mhz? We have a small 2 man PD here that is part of the county 800 trunked system. They are on the fringe, hard to get out with the portable...

The BEST solution I ever saw for that mess, short of having the county install a satellite receiver on ...

Search found 72 matches

Re: Motorola Moden 100

Wideband 49-53 MHz antenna

Input needed: Low band NEW multi-user system

Moto equipment for 49 MHz + 6 meters

LOW BAND: Which freq is better?

Control Head Question: HCN-4038A

Re: Need help on IDing these two signalling (.mp3)

Need Help: VHF Maratrac

Re: MO3?