[CALV-ARES] LITZ Paging

[Eric H. Christensen]

At one of the recent meetings we discussed notification of ARES members to an emergency.  So far we've got the telephone tree and SMS messages but I'd still prefer another means that is completely amateur radio since we have little to no control over those other commerical means.  When I talked with Bill N3XMZ about it a few months ago he said he remembered a little box that would listen to the repeater (or other frequency) for pager tones and would open the receiver and flash a light when the tones were heard.

I think I might have found something that we could use for not only ARES but any time anyone is in need of help.  Using LITZ (long interval tone zero)(basically pressing and holding zero on your DTMF pad for a few seconds) we can not only get the attention of users on the repeater but can also activate little pagers like this: http://www.ltronics.com/paging.htm.  There might be other options out there but this seemed to be an interesting little box.  They are a little pricy at $65 (or $75 with battery backup) but the site says that there would be a discount ($10 per unit) for orders over 10.

Would this be something of interest?

73,
Eric W4OTN/3