[TheList] Pager System switched off

Sun Aug 9 05:53:00 AEST 2015

I was one of many Radio Technicians from all over the Country who went 
down to Salcom in Christchurch in July 2000 for training on the Salcom 
Infill Paging system. We completed the installations in September 2000. 
I recall the Concorde crashing whilst I was down there on the course. 
Back then they received the Telecom Flex paging network and 
retransmitted it as POCSAG on a different frequency. The Flex receiver 
had a 5 Element Yagi installed pointed at the strongest paging 
transmitter received at the site. POCSAG transmitter had a mobile 
Colinear on a ground plane kit.

The POCSAG transmitters had 8 digital inputs, 4 programmed by default, 
as well as the serial data from the FLEX receiver. As a standard instal 
the POCSAG transmitter (in a 1U rack case) had a digital imput that 
triggered an immediate call to pagers that a callout was in process, it 
was triggered by the siren on Selcall command via the LMR Network, it 
also had an Officer Call button on the front, where they could call the 
crew to the station manually and it had two other inputs, one NC input, 
one NO Input, that could be connected to the stations burglar alarm to 
alert crew the station had been compromised (Up to individual stations 
to get connected, not done by us and as I found out later, very few 
where connected). There was often a delay in the paging network in those 
days, which at busy times could be up to a minute long, when the page 
was received on the flex receiver it was forwarded as a serial data 
string to the POCSAG Transmitter which in turn transmitted it locally to 
the crews pagers.

The benefits of this system was not only better coverage to the pagers. 
They went off quicker as the LMR Selcall's had no delays, also under 
mains failure the sirens didn't come up, but the 12V powered POCSAG 
Infill Pagers still worked. The disadvantage some said that crew often 
looked at the calls details on their pagers when they arrived as they 
responded (Drove to the station).

Later the system was converted to serial data from the SKY TV Satellite 
distribution network, this guaranteed full NZ coverage and less delays. 
Many stations fitted Parallel Dot Matrix printers to their Flex 
receivers, which printed the call details onto a form that was pre 
loaded into the printer, it made their lives easier when logging the 
call and gave them a printed copy whilst at the job.

Hope that little bit of history helps fill in a few gaps.

Personally, the installation at Benneydale in the Waikato proved 
challenging for me as a Thunderstorm rolled through as we were 
completing the installation. Quite a frustrating day for me, as a Storm 
Chaser you know what I wanted to go and do, but I had a job to complete 
and I was in a work vehicle. Worst of all, I overlooked fitting the N 
connector to the RG213U feed to the POCSAG transmitter, the Mobile 
Colinear Aerial did not have a bypass to earth and rain static had a 
spark jumping the end of the dielectric between centre conductor and 
braid, it at times as a couple of sparks a second. I had fun with the 
spark, holding it up the the phone and ringing the crew at Salcom to 
hear, I had to ring them to check their was a DC Path inside the 
transmitter to discharge the charge being deposited on the aerial by the 
charged rain droplets. Eventually it was apparent the rain wasn't going 
to stop and I became the discharge path whilst fitting the plug. My 
colleague and the NZFS representative (VSO?) where impressed. I must 
confess that it had quite a bite if you touched it when a bit of charge 
had built up, but once the discharge had occurred, it wasn't so bad, 
very low current, so long as you stayed across it.

Have a nice weekend guys,

Neill ZL1TAJ :-)

On 8/08/2015 9:30 p.m., Brendan Sheehy wrote:
>
> Keep an eye on if for sure, but they were only licensed in April this 
> year due to a modification of the previous licence. Most of the 
> stations on that licence have been licensed for paging since pre 2005.
>
> *From:*TheList [mailto:thelist-bounces at radiowiki.org.nz] *On Behalf Of 
> *DogSecurity - Richard
> *Sent:* Saturday, August 8, 2015 5:32 PM
> *To:* thelist at radiowiki.org.nz
> *Subject:* Re: [TheList] Pager System switched off
>
> Well I'm not overly convinced, they were done in april this year and 
> Hamilton I know for a fact has very good coverage as you'd expect so, 
> guess it's worth watching out for :)
>
> On 8/08/2015 5:29 p.m., shiters_r_us at hotmail.com 
> <mailto:shiters_r_us at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>     Only time you would get anything on that freq is when the station
>     in question gets turned out.
>
>     Regards
>
>     Brendan
>
>
>
>     On Fri, Aug 7, 2015 at 8:00 PM -0700, "DogSecurity - Richard"
>     <richard at dogsecurity.co.nz <mailto:richard at dogsecurity.co.nz>> wrote:
>
>     It hasn't been turned off, Spark have just announced they're
>     killing it in 2017.
>
>     I would say they may have been known for a bit, looking on RSM
>     you'll see some pager frequencies have been registered to NZFS
>     since April, with transmitters on each station, so I suspect
>     they've at least thought this would happen and have something up
>     their sleeves.  Monitoring the frequency I haven't had any output
>     for it, so I guess they've just got the frequency allocated for
>     future use
>
>     On 8/08/2015 2:49 p.m., John Barnhill wrote:
>
>         NZ Fire Service not happy that ‘SPARK’ did not advise them
>         that the ‘paging system’ has been turned off! Is this nationwide?
>
>         John B
>
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