Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by FRANKS on May 20, 2008 at 12:54pm

Okay we had Nebraska State Fire School this passed weekend and I came across the "Apollo." I did some talking with the vendor. He seemed pretty confindent with the Apollo. There was a couple of different chooses. He had a really small one, and a larger one which compared to the minitor 5. Do you have the small one or the larger one? THANKS

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Jason Beal on May 20, 2008 at 3:14am

These Icom radios are very reliable and work well for us in a very rural setting including hills and canyons. Our department set up its own channels separate from dispatch, one is line-of-sight and one is repeated. This is for departmental use when coordinating response and doing training.

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Todd Parker on May 20, 2008 at 12:19am

We carry Kenwood TK2160 VHF portable radio/pagers. They work for us and we can use them to talk to each other on a channel that is not monitored by dispatch. That frees up the 800 mhz dispatch radio for emergency communications. At about $400 they are cheaper than most motorola pagers and they also have the capability of being a 2 way radio which motorola minitors don't. All members also are issued a Alpha Numeric pager and all calls are paged on both systems.

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Joe Stoltz on May 20, 2008 at 10:47pm

I have used all five versions of the Minitor, from the original right on up to the 5. I have also repaired all types over the past 12 years and here's how I would rank them (best to worst):

Minitor 2 (or 1)
Minitor 1 (or 2)
Minitor 5
Minitor 3
Minitor 4

We bought 30 of the 4s in 2005 and by now they all have gone back to M for warranty repair. We have a few 5s that are working OK, I like them much better than the 3/4. We haven't had problems with the 3s other than a broken knob or battery door.

Bull, the Apollo VP200 and the Minitor 5 are identical pagers. Some may be surprised by this, but "M" hasn't designed a fire pager since the Minitor 2 in the 1980s. Every model since then has been designed and built by offshore companies.

I suspect that that's the reason the newer ones particularly the 4s are so crappy.

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Bull on May 23, 2008 at 12:37am

The Apollo pagers we have are the same size as the M-5's. Other Dept's around here have been using them, and they are also satisfied with them. We bought like 25-30 M-4's a few years ago, and they all had to go back for this and that. We really hated them. Still didnt work right after we had them supposedly fixed either.

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by FireMedic821 on May 21, 2008 at 6:34am

Go old school and kick it back with the Minitor 2's!!! They worked great, never had any trouble with them. We now have 5's and they seem to always quit working or not pick up the signal for one reason or another.

▶ Reply to This

• 1
• 2