r/Firefighting • u/heretolookonly • 4d ago
Tools/Equipment/PPE Scott Vision C5 Mask Communication
Curious how many firefighters use Scott brand Vision C5 masks. If you do, did your department buy voice amplifiers or were they cost prohibitive? What are your thoughts on communication quality without the voice amplifiers?
2
u/Peaches0k Texas FF/Medic/HazMat Tech 4d ago
We don’t have the C5 but every guy is issued a voice amp. I don’t think I ever actually use it though cause I always forget and you’re yelling at everyone anyways. Even in training I don’t use it.
1
u/heretolookonly 4d ago
Through the masks? We had amps with the Av3000 scott masks and they worked great. The new masks amps are like 2k each or something crazy, but nobody seems to be able to hear. Even when yelling. But especially in loud fires, nobody can hear anything being said.
1
u/Peaches0k Texas FF/Medic/HazMat Tech 4d ago
I’m not saying the ones we have suck I just never turn it on and I don’t think anyone here really remembers too either
•
u/FordExploreHer1977 8h ago
Ours used to eat a set of batteries each shift…even if we didn’t turn them on. And the bracket they mounted to the mask on was two pieces that separated if you were able to turn it on… I modified the bracket from my AV2000 to use the AV2000 voicemitter on my AV3000. It took a 9volt battery instead of 3 AAAs and worked so much better. They keep making their product worse with every generation it seems.
1
u/tyadams15 3d ago
We have the C5s with radio direct interface, as soon as you turn it on, it connects to your radio. It works pretty well and the radio transmissions are pretty clear
1
u/heretolookonly 3d ago
Does each company have a different radio channel then? Or each division? Our trouble is company level communication. Officers can TX on the radio to command, but inside, person to person is an issue.
2
u/tyadams15 3d ago edited 3d ago
Every member is issued their own radio when they get hired so their radio is paired to their own mask. Edited to add we all work on the same Tac channel.
1
u/im_a_realist_FF42023 3d ago
My department is the same, the only issues we seem to have is the lack of being able to tighten up the top strap. We get a lot of air leakage out the top of our masks. We have issues with the bone conduction “wire” also coming dislodged from the place it’s supposed to be in at the top of the mask.
1
u/FordExploreHer1977 2d ago
Well, we left Scott because of the lack of options that were standard on the MSA. We have voice amplification and BT radio communications that come standard as part of the base pack. Just had to purchase a little key fob for each radio for $60. It all works off the rechargeable battery pack in the air pack itself. Scott couldn’t offer any of that standard with their packs and their salesman kept stating that those were just more points of failure that could happen in their competitors packs. In the next sentence, he was pushing all the added features that could be added to their packs for additional fees. I guess his point was that if you pay a bunch more money for those features if you buy Scott, they aren’t possible points of failure….
•
u/heretolookonly 11h ago
What a weird sales pitch
•
u/FordExploreHer1977 8h ago
That’s what everyone in our region was saying as we looked at each other. We all had SCOTT previously and realized they basically hadn’t done any real improvements to their pack. They just added 3M to it. At least their last iteration allowed you to still use the AV2000 mask if you couldn’t afford to upgrade to the AV3000. They couldn’t even offer a rechargeable battery pack, which our old SCOTT packs ate batteries. Our voice amplifiers never worked because they used batteries so fast. When we looked at the new models, they didn’t even offer voice amplifiers because they said you could hear better with the new mask design (then he demoed it and we couldn’t hear him worth a shit). He went into detail about how their high pressure regulators had some type of design where if it failed it would bypass and you could still breathe. He said no other manufacturers were implementing that type design. I asked him why did they design it where it could fail in the first place? No answer. I swear they sent the new guy who just learned about SCBAs that morning to present their product to an entire region of our state who got awarded huge grant for SCBAs, lol. Poor guy didn’t even know what he was in for and we all pretty much handed him his ass…
•
u/heretolookonly 7h ago
Lol that's a funny story. Also a bit sad.
I did hear there is a 3rd party adaptor for the new scott C5 to use the old scott voice amp. That would be awesome if its legit. Id like to try it out.
4
u/JonnyDepth_69 WA Career FF 4d ago
It’s not great, nothing is great about the C5. No voice amp and communication is sub-par at any given time. You sort-of get used to it but overall it’s a significant step backwards from the AV3000. How they compete with what MSA has on the market these days is beyond me.