advice on Minitor V

[NIFOG291]

My department uses UHF Minitor Vs. Some guys, only 15 miles or so outside the city report poor reception and missed pages. Their portables receive fine. I would like to experiment with an external antenna on the charger/amplifier base. These guys don't mind a whip on the nightstand or dresser. Our local shop wants to sell me quaterwave antennas on mag mounts but that seems like it would be worse. Any thoughts?

[Mfire39]

What kind of portables do the guys carry?

-Marc

[JeffFireRadio]

Greetings. First of all, you say that you are using Minitor 5 charger-amplifiers. Are you currently utilizing the Motorola antenna that is available for those charger-amps and plugs directly into the back of that unit or are you antenna-less altogether? If you're not using those, I'd say give one a try for openers. For UHF, it's a little 6" whip with a 90 degree connector on it. We can give you the M part number if you need it. And, it's a lot more wife-friendly than a mag mount and 17' of RG-58 cable. I'm not sure a quarterwave or gain antenna on a mag mount is going to help you more than the antenna on the back of the charger-amp if you're going to leave it at nightstand level. Now, if your at-home boys are going to put it in the attic or up on top of the armoire (okay, tv cabinet), then maybe you'll see some added reception. I'm in the same band with the same history of issues, so we know where you're coming from. Any other opinions?

[NIFOG291]

We're using XTS-5000 portables. On the amps we do have the factory antennas. They don't seem to fit very well and the plastic hub never feels like it latches onto the connector. I can set up the portables with a page channel but I was looking for the easy way out.

[Mfire39]

I can set up the portables with a page channel but I was looking for the easy way out.

Setting up a QCII system on the XTS5000's seems a little easier and possibly a little more practical over having a whip sitting on someone’s dresser... Just a thought..

-Marc

[MOTO_LR]

I would recommend that you try one of the following antennas with your Minitor V Amplified Chargers...
Larsen Model KD14-450-HW2 or
Laird Technologies Model G450BN
These are 1/2-wave Rubber Duck type portable antennas

My first preference is the Larsen model.

You will also need a BNC Female/BNC Male right angle adapter...
Emerson #27-8150, RF Industries #RFB-1132, Amphenol #31-9, or Radio Shack #278-116

Bob, CLARKCOMM

[NIFOG291]

Marc,

I'm the comm guy for my department, by default. Our city is part of a UASI grant program and we got radios and some training for me with the money. I went through a 3 day, M sponsored programming class but I'm not an expert by any means. I'm a little intimidated by doing a QC channel. Is the software and help topics helpful enough to guide me through it? That does sound more practical than a whip in the bedroom....

The Larsen antenna suggestion is a good one and still on the table.

[Mfire39]

I'm a little intimidated by doing a QC channel. Is the software and help topics helpful enough to guide me through it? That does sound more practical than a whip in the bedroom....

It's actually very easy to set up a channel for QCII decode.. Basically, go into the QCII system, and put in your pager A-B, C-D tones.. There are quite a few selections in there for decoding options such as the standard A-B, A-C, long tone B, and so on.. Once you get your tones in that field, set up a conv personality that you want to use for your decode channel.. If you aren't using any signaling currently on your dispatch channel, such as MDC ID's, this will work even better. You can set up your current dispatch channel for QCII instead of adding a separate paging channel..

Go into the conventional personality that your dispatch channel is using, ie conv pers 1, and go to the signaling tab and set it to QCII..



Once that's done, go down to the QCII tab and check the following boxes..


Now, go into the button assignment section, and assign a side button to "voice mute". Write all this back to the radio. Now when you press the button for voice mute, the radio will act like a minitor pager and stay muted until your tones are received.. Press the voice mute again after the tones drop, and it resets the radio back to "pager mode".. Hope this helps you get started.. If you have any other questions on this, just let me know..

-Marc

[NIFOG291]

WOW, Thanks for the walk through. My programming laptop is at the firehouse but once I'm done with days off I'll try this. We do page out on our primary channel,and we do use MDC IDs.

Thanks again for the help everyone. I'll update in a few days with my progress. Our city IT guy had this website blocked on networked computers, and it took a lot of convincing that it was a useful forum.

[NIFOG291]

Ok, so it took me a few months to get around to doing the QC group. Marc's advice was perfect. It works great. Now I'm trying to do the impossible. Is it possible to have individual pages and an all call? We have several positions that can be called out individually and a working fire all call tone.

[tuckerm]

A solution I rolled out in our Department sends "pages" to individuals cell phones using software. It's an easy way as most everyone has cell phones. PM me if you'd like the link.

[NIFOG291]

A solution I rolled out in our Department sends "pages" to individuals cell phones using software. It's an easy way as most everyone has cell phones. PM me if you'd like the link.

All of the officers in my department have cell phones too. 51% of this project is me being a geek and 49% is actual need. I'll send a PM too.

[Motoboy]

It is very possible and practical to have individual pages as well as an all call. This can be accomplished easily on both the XTS5000 and the Minitor V.

Under the Quick-Call II System-1 (or -2 or whatever), you have a drop-down list with many choices, like A-B/A-C, A-B/C-D, A-B/Long B, etc. You can actually have up to 4 different pages on one system. Just set up what page tones you want the radio to receive, like individual, duty shift, and all call (which is usually a long tone) in the QCII System settings.

On the Minitor V, it's a little more complicated because you need to look at the Coding Option (just toggle through until you find what you need), and then you can set up duty pages. You can have twelve different pages per channel. Under the function switches tab, if you enable On/Off Duty on one or more switch positions, then you can turn off pages using the drop down boxes in the Channel tab. Use this if you only have one duty shift page, and the user doesn't want to wake up in the middle of the night for a call he doesn't need to respond to.

I have seen the cell phone paging systems, but they are slow. You attach a radio to a computer in the station that triggers an auto-dialer somewhere else in the world (India, maybe?), and then you have an alerting device that someone might have been talking on a lot and ran the battery dead, or that got left in the truck, or that may have traveled outside the service area, or that might not work because a cell site went down (which you have no control over). It poses the same problems as the proposed APCO/commercial LTE network.

[tvsjr]

I have seen the cell phone paging systems, but they are slow. You attach a radio to a computer in the station that triggers an auto-dialer somewhere else in the world (India, maybe?), and then you have an alerting device that someone might have been talking on a lot and ran the battery dead, or that got left in the truck, or that may have traveled outside the service area, or that might not work because a cell site went down (which you have no control over). It poses the same problems as the proposed APCO/commercial LTE network.

The cell phone systems are not a replacement for a primary alerting device, but they can be pretty handy for a secondary. I'm doing something similar, using some free software... it records the page from a scanner, encodes it into MP3, and emails it to my iPhone as an attachment. Not ideal, but better than nothing when you can't get the text data from the CAD.

It's come in handy when someone has been out of radio coverage (say, at work) but can learn about a large incident in progress, and perhaps bring additional apparatus or provide relief.

As for the proposed APCO/LTE network... I suspect we'll all be old and gray before that happens. There are enough political issues getting most county-wide systems up and running - nationwide? Forget it...

[tuckerm]

I have seen the cell phone paging systems, but they are slow. You attach a radio to a computer in the station that triggers an auto-dialer somewhere else in the world (India, maybe?), and then you have an alerting device that someone might have been talking on a lot and ran the battery dead, or that got left in the truck, or that may have traveled outside the service area, or that might not work because a cell site went down (which you have no control over). It poses the same problems as the proposed APCO/commercial LTE network.

It will never replace regular paging, however, it's not an auto-dialer. It's a simple software program that listens for pages on a MIC INPUT/LINE INPUT on your soundcard. Plug in your scanner or old radio and it monitors and emails pages out. I usually get them a minute after the inital tones start.

I work in a building that's all metal/concrete. I have zero pager reception and I'm only 5 miles from the tower. It's come in handy to help me catch the ones I miss because of the building.