Secure COMMS

What are you guys planning to use them for? Or just to play around with?

I'd fall in the latter category. I was thinking it would be fun to try and setup communication between my friend's house and mine. He's about 8 miles away as the crow flies. If I stashed them strategically I wonder how hard that would be to do. If they didn't have to be solar, they could be pretty small, just hanging in a tree or bush along the road.

That's what appealed to me about those birdhouse ones those guys were making. I don't think they ever got to production levels, but they shared all of the design data.
Strictly backup comms in my AO. Going to try and reach my bestie 4.1 miles to the west. I should have a radio up high enough at my house where it will cover the neighbors I care about as well.

These are good for finding high spots and LOS for these devices, (radios in general)


 
I have two of these inbound to test. AES256 encryption.


Sweet! Love HTs with USB charging. The only drawback is that at 5W, range is minimal w/o some amplification. But that’s quite possible.

Looking forward to your report.
 
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Sweet! Love HTs with USB charging. The only drawback is that at 5W, range is minimal w/o some amplification. But that’s quite possible.

Looking forward to your report.
I just ran a quick power test on analog, it was reading 7.3-7.5w. I think they just put another firmware version out so I'm going to get it updated, get the the 256 is working and run a digital power test too.

The stock antenna is 1.1 swr at 148mhz, which I thought was surprising. I even re-calibrated my rig expert to make sure I wasn't seeing things.
 
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I just ran a quick power test on analog, it was reading 7.3-7.5w. I think they just put another firmware version out so I'm going to get it updated, get the the 256 is working and run a digital power test too.

The stock antenna is 1.1 swr at 148mhz, which I thought was surprising. I even re-calibrated my rig expert to make sure I wasn't seeing things.
Now, all you need is something worth encrypting to say! 😅
 
I've heard malicious QRM directed at one station in a QSO but not another.
The lids will actually monitor repeaters on the off chance that they can jam
specific ops that they hate.
It is also a technique to hide your location. Transmit from two locations at once. Makes foz hunting difficult.
 
Since this thread talked a lot about DMR, I'm putting this here.


Brandmeister has had serious problems for awhile now, causing some hams to avoid it entirely. RadioID has also caused serious problems as well. We are considering our options with the southern New England NXDN network and I can report that some of us are advocating for insulating ourselves from any Brandmeister or RadioID involvement.
 
After I got a RadioID number, I kind of wondered why I bothered.

Our problem with RadioID is that they came upon the scene and thoroughly trashed an ID system that had been agreed to nationally by the stakeholders. The longtime ID system was based on FIPS code. Currently, on their own decision, RadioID is literally handing out NXDN ID's with the Massachusetts FIPS code prefix to people located elsewhere and that have been in use by people in this area for the past 15 years.

It is enough of a problem that we are considering various options to block these interlopers with RadioID issued ID's from the NXDN network. We have a couple of methods we could employ. One of the owners is advocating for using subscriber radio registration. This is similar to the method employed by the cellular phone industry to keep non-authorized phones off their network. Modern digital commercial/public safety grade radios and repeaters have similar technology baked into the equipment, so it is a simple process for us to disassociate from the madness.

There are some hams that have recent videos on Youtube and Rumble that have taken a deep dive into the problems.
 
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