Dirt Moving Any ideas on how to be reachable when operating your tractor?

[patrick_g]

Gee, what an ego booster to be totally indispensable and depended on by so many people... but then slavery is slavery however disguised.

About putting your electronic leash near some sensitive part of your anatomy... once upon a time I briefly had a pager. I had it on vibrate so as to not be disruptive to others. I was in a meeting with the prof of a graduate course and a couple other students also doing special projects when my pager went off and tickled a sensitive region of my upper thigh. I suddenly sat straight up and jammed my hand deep into my pants pocket like I was wrestling with a snake or being stung by scorpions. Everyone was aghast at my carrying on until I produced the pager and turned it off.

Pat

 

[Dargo]

I don't know if anyone has mentioned it, but I either use my Bose QCII headphones listening to musing via my phone (the app Pandora is great BTW - your own radio station), or the phone adapter for my Sure ear buds. Either allow me to not only hear my phone ring, but to carry on a conversation. With a booster and better antenna on your machine and either/both of the above options you've completely covered.

I'm getting ready to go out and mow for the day and I'm deciding which Pandora radio station I want to create right now.

 

[Soundguy]

I take it it lets you build song selections?

soundguy

 

[Dargo]

I take it it lets you build song selections?

soundguy

Yes, you pick one song you like and it makes a "radio station" that plays only similar type songs. I've been using it for almost a year and I can count on one hand the number of times it's played a song that I didn't care for or didn't think matched the genre I chose.

I don't know if it's available on other phones or iPods, but the app is called Pandora. I literally don't keep but a handful of songs on my ipod portion of my phone (even though I have 32 GB of storage for tunes). I constantly find myself saying (yeah, I talk to myself on my tractor), wow, I forgot about that song. Cool!

Yes, it's a free app

 

[Stampeder]

Ultrarunner:

Been there, done that. I was Chief Engineer for two radio stations and got paged by my boss when my second son was being born. He knew where I was but wanted me to come in anyway!!!
That was the last stray for me. It took me a while but I found another job and was sooo much happier and never wore a pager again.

Now about coverage. Contact a local ham radio operator. I'm a ham and we have all kinds of tricks up our sleeve's to make things work.....battery operated repeater's, etc. You'll find most of them more than willing to help out....a lot of them look for problems like this to solve. Antenna's in trees happen all the time.

Hope this helps........Good luck on finding a new job.....

Glenn.

 

[JohninCT]

On the suggestion of wearing the pager on a sensitive area try this... I tried it with my pager set to vibrate and it works pretty good. Its simple. Clip the pager to the back adjusting strap on a baseball cap. The pager vibrates against your head and neck. I'd be surprized if you couldn't feel this while on the tractor with hearing protection. Try it and find out

 

[pitt_md]

I don't understand how you think any type of ringer/vibration will do any good if your out of coverage? In coverage area I keep mine in my shirt pocket on vibrate. I always feel it even when running tractor.
Had my horse step on a pager when it fell off my belt one weekend. That didn't go over to good with the boss. :laughing:

 

[ultrarunner]

On the suggestion of wearing the pager on a sensitive area try this... I tried it with my pager set to vibrate and it works pretty good. Its simple. Clip the pager to the back adjusting strap on a baseball cap. The pager vibrates against your head and neck. I'd be surprized if you couldn't feel this while on the tractor with hearing protection. Try it and find out

I'm going to give the pager on the back of Baseball cap... brilliant and simple!

Pager always has coverage... sometimes people don't key in complete numbers which is another problem

Cell Phones have lots of dead areas in the Bay Area because of the terrain... much of the Bay Area is like a giant bowl and coverage is excellent in the bowl and along every freeway... even going through the tunnels... the problem areas are over or behind many of the ridges that make up the bowl...

 

[radioman]

There must be pagers for the deaf.

The deaf have pagers just like the hearing- blackberry's or sidekicks or whatever they can use to type texts with. Just think of your teenagers texting- mostly same phone. It has the exact same problem of vibrators not strong enough when on a tractor or in noisy, running equipments. Nothing is being done since majority of calls/texts are in "normal" environment.

I used to be on call 24/7/364 days a year. When I got sick of it, I basically asked for a lower title, different job they offered a on call pay bonus when I get paged if I would stay on call. I reluctantly did that then eventually left that job.

 

[Gittyup]

Pager always has coverage... sometimes people don't key in complete numbers which is another problem

Not exactly. Pagers provide better coverage (than cell phones) due to their waveform characteristics and the repeating nature of pager protocols. But, they do not work everywhere, all the time. However, on the pager models with "guaranteed delivery", the transmitter will contually send the page until it gets notification of delivery. Hence, it's more robust than cellular. Though some cellulars do support a similar paging function as long as the originator issues a true page and not a phone call, text message, or email. In general the pager will give much better coverage.

If coverage is the issue, then satellite is the best option. Iridium phones are the smallest (very slick as satphones go). But because the sats are low earth orbit, in really deep canyons they too may have blind spots for short periods of time. It is time related because these satellites are not geosynchronous, and thus move across the sky. The most rebust is probably an Inmarsat phone, because these are geosynchronous, high orbit sats. Problem is the phones can be big and are expensive (not that iridium isn't). I think that all the SatCom solutions would be reliable enough for you. There are companies that specialize in satcom. Get your employer to agree to pursue this as an option and give them a call to see what your options are.

There are also these things called femto-cells that are new to the market. These extend cellular coverage. They are designed for basements, subways, and deep buildings. Not sure how well they perform or what form factors they come in. Might be worth looking into.

Still Satcom is your best, lightest, most reliable, and convenient option.