Since the fire company took over the old high band frequency formerly used by the township police, we have been struggling along using GE portables that were older than dirt. They did work, but just don't have the pizazz of more modern electronics or the small size.
So, Dan (our Fire Police Captain) and I decided to look around the market and see what was available. Well, Rich and the good folks at Metropolitan Communications who handle the company's communications and emergency lighting needs had just the solution for us. So, on Friday, we went over and picked up our new Motorola Mag One VHF Portables.
They work super and have programmed in not only our frequency, but the mutual aid companies that we work with in the area. Personally, I like Motorola because they have been making public safety radios for years and they are known for their quality and sturdiness. I also like the features that are available for programming the radio. Rich chose the four most common ones for the programmable buttons: monitor (break squelch momentarily), sticky monitor (break squelch until you press the button again), scan (channel scan), and (my favorite) nuisance channel delete (remove a channel from the scan list). Rated output is a full 5 watts and it works great so far in the initial tests. Our major problem is hilly terrain, full of metamorphic rocks - in the words of my old ham radio friend Fritz "those signal sucking rocks" - and our hope is that using high-band VHF will get the message through where the 800-MHz system doesn't.
So, back to finals' week work - still have a few more maps to pump out.
For the scanner listeners in Central Chester County, the West Whiteland Fire Police can be heard responding and on scene on 158.970 MHz simplex. I will add it to the live scanner stream today as well.
New Radio
Since the fire company took over the old high band frequency formerly used by the township police, we have been struggling along using GE portables that were older than dirt. They did work, but just don't have the pizazz of more modern electronics or the small size.
So, Dan (our Fire Police Captain) and I decided to look around the market and see what was available. Well, Rich and the good folks at Metropolitan Communications who handle the company's communications and emergency lighting needs had just the solution for us. So, on Friday, we went over and picked up our new Motorola Mag One VHF Portables.
They work super and have programmed in not only our frequency, but the mutual aid companies that we work with in the area. Personally, I like Motorola because they have been making public safety radios for years and they are known for their quality and sturdiness. I also like the features that are available for programming the radio. Rich chose the four most common ones for the programmable buttons: monitor (break squelch momentarily), sticky monitor (break squelch until you press the button again), scan (channel scan), and (my favorite) nuisance channel delete (remove a channel from the scan list). Rated output is a full 5 watts and it works great so far in the initial tests. Our major problem is hilly terrain, full of metamorphic rocks - in the words of my old ham radio friend Fritz "those signal sucking rocks" - and our hope is that using high-band VHF will get the message through where the 800-MHz system doesn't.
So, back to finals' week work - still have a few more maps to pump out.
For the scanner listeners in Central Chester County, the West Whiteland Fire Police can be heard responding and on scene on 158.970 MHz simplex. I will add it to the live scanner stream today as well.
I just bought a MagOne BPR40 and like it except.
It will not sound the tones When the pagers go off you want hear anything until the dispatcher starts to talk. Some one tell me something
Jim
Jim -
That is the one feature that the BPR40 does not have. You have to upgrade to one of the other portables to get that feature. At our station, we use them for response and supplemental on-scene (when 800 doesn't work) communications, as well as with our mutual aid companies. Also, we have programmed in (receive only) the PD dispatch. We still use our trusty Minitors for alert tone paging.
Jim
We use them for paintball the texas death dealers bought these. I pick them up for $152 new at iloveradios.com they sell them $12 above cost I found out so they can make their minmum sales quota to be a dealer. cheapest place on the net