It was weird trying to explain this to my family, too. Basically just had to tell them "Nothing you say is private, and you should all say my call sign at the end of each transmission." We all felt like dorks, but it was super convenient in a place with no cell service.
One of the (ham) radio clubs that I'm a member of does this as a benefit for the group, and it's something that's nice to have: I can give my wife a radio and not worry about what she may or may not say if we have to take two separate cars when we road trip.
I've been meaning to do the process myself, but, I haven't had the time (and honestly, I'd want someone else to do the paperwork for me so I'm more likely to pay someone else to do it) recently, but, this might be the thing that prompts me to go and do it.
73 de K4IMW/WQZQ315
What sort of radio do you use?
My friend and I tried to do -- the two of us in different cars driving down the same stretch of highway this with GPRS radios and very quickly we were not able to pick up the other's broadcast. We assumed it was that we didn't have big enough antennas and were not using a repeater.
Note - others were driving we were each a passenger in our respective cars.
Edit: Sorry, it's GMRS, not GPRS (facepalm)
But 90.35 does not allow for individuals to be licensed for personal communications. My guess is that if a ham club is offering this to members, it is doing so as an educational institution, or a public safety organization. If the license is granted that way, using it for personal communications would be impermissible.
Could you get the FCC to grant you a license you if you say you have a 2 person organization in your house? Maybe, I'd even say its likely if you spent a few minutes to get an EIN before getting your FRN.
Does that make it legal to use a commercial license for personal use? No.
P25 Encryption is pretty good, in terms of quality.
https://www.mattblaze.org/blog/p25
https://www.mattblaze.org/papers/p25sec.pdf
I will grant that the open-source kfdtool keyloader boxes are neat.
I have been meaning to see if I can repro the induced transmission via retransmission requests thing when the data packet stuff is fully disabled via CPS, but a friend permanently borrowed my hackrf so that project is on hold for now. I'm not optimistic, though, due to the comments in the paper about where in the stack the retransmission request is processed.
In the end, the goal of P25 was to make it almost, but not completely possible to listen in - I'd also note the way they did their testing is not how these radios are typically deployed, which is not direct subscriber to subscriber on simplex, its either via a conventional repeated system or via a trunked system.
I do agree that frequent key changes are bad - but for entirely different reason, they're an operation nightmare. Most agencies who deploy it either use very long lived keys deployed by KVL, or deploy a UKEK and then change keys via OTAR on some cycle, which is not infrequently, never.
My belief is the theoretical risks on P25 are not well proven in reality, you're more likely to have some interference issue over say, intentional jamming.
Either way a radio for ~75 bucks plus supporting hardware that will do AES256 isnt bad - and DES-OFB/DES-XL is good enough to keep the casual listener out, which is more or less the point of the crypto here. Also I know they make a big deal about unit ID's, but they carry no meaningful info, its just a hex ID.
Individuals using radios for personal use are not eligible for the types of licenses I am familiar with, though.
FCC fees are actually only $205. I do these all the time for work.
Also, you can get multiple frequencies on the same license, and you should if you are getting itinerants because there are so few and they are heavily shared.
The application takes around 15 mins if you're familiar with it and can be done completely online. If you've never done it before, it might take you an hour or more to figure out.
All that being said, the itinerants I am familiar with are in part 90 and that is only for commercial use. Its not clear to me that an individual would be eligible for this type of license for personal communications.
I still can't believe any of this is even an issue though.
There's no technical reason we couldn't have cheap all digital bubble pack radios with miles of range and mesh support, running deep learning codecs on an ASIC or something....
Every time I'm on a project that needs radios it's an expensive hassle that seems like it should have been solved by now.
It's so bizarre coming into the radio world from the tech/web/network protocols world. On one hand everything is so nicely defined and regulated and licensed and shared. On the other hand all the UX seems 20 years in the past.
I'm excited about things like DMR and handheld to handheld texting, but that's a harder license to get and there's only one expensive handheld that actually supports the texting, I think...
Actually using custom hardware or soft is not something I consider a reasonable choice, basically ever, unless there's no off the shelf alternative, or I'm specifically being paid to create said off the shelf alternative.
CB has a bit better range but otherwise I'd mostly agree.
In practice FRS is the only thing I ever actually use besides checking in at the weekly net with a Baofeng, it's just the standard everywhere, even for small scale commerical stuff, and it's what everyone I know already has.
I'm not discussing anything secret, just making breakfast plans etc, but having to try to find a quiet channel every time is such a pain...
Discovered this list while learning & researching:
https://www.k0tfu.org/reference/frs-gmrs-privacy-codes-demys...
You just inadvertently sent me down one hell of a rabbit hole.
It arrives Thursday.
I've got a few UV-K5(99)s right now, and I end up giving them away to friends (even if I replace the duckies and keep the tri-bands) when new models release. With the custom bandpass and filter mods, they're reignited a very old interest of mine.
The answer depends on what you want to do or explore. You have many different options, including RTL-SDR type USB dongles for use with software like SDR# and gqrx.
Is the 5RM as hackable as these?
Yeah we live in an interesting time where you can get powerful HAM handhelds for a fraction of what they used to cost.
FYI if you're not aware... not to be the no fun police, but you do need a license to transmit with one. And it's technically not legal to use them on FRS/GMRS/MURS frequencies even with a license, though that's probably the least enforced rule on the FCC books. Assuming you're in the US at least.
Since I don't have a license yet, the next time I'm playing with it, I am going to enable the TX block on all bands, so as to prevent any accidents.
Of course, much to the FCC's annoyance, in the "dangerous mods" list, you can also choose to disable the TX block on all bands. You really shouldn't do that, though. The folks that run this project are trying to do the right thing and warn anyone that goes down that path ...
I don't think the FCC cares too much about mods like that on hardware that's meant for licensed amateurs. Amateur license covers all sorts of radio modifications, you're supposed to police yourself and manage what you have the right to do. It's actually using the mod to transmit out of band they would fine you for (theoretically... you're unlikely to get caught), not just having the ability. The thing that they get pissed off about is when people without a license can buy hardware meant for amateurs and easily use it out of band without really needing to do anything. That's what they've cracked down on in the past, especially shady importers on Amazon marketing unlocked amateur radios for bands like FRS.
but you can't legally send encrypted over the radio, since those protocols are restricted by the FCC.
You won't catch a charge for what you said, but you might get fined for misuse of the radio band. its the same way you can't spray paint a slogan on the front of someone's business -- the content is fine, but the medium is not.
people understand the idiom that just because your radio has squelch set (too high, perhaps) that it doesn't mean someone else can't hear it.
otherwise, CTCSS codes works fine, that's the technical description of what it is. and actually they call them "squelch tones" there. it's only motorola that branded them as "private lines", that's their trademark for an adequately-described term. Much like Tesla "Full Self Driving"/"Autopilot", it's kind of a misnomer and definitely breeds (deserved) confusion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_Tone-Coded_Squelch_...
let’s give users at least a little bit of agency here