Posted: 11/6/2013 8:56:13 AM EDT
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By trade, I was taught to be a radio ninja in the military, but I'm new to the amateur side of the house. I just wanted to ask if the civilian market had anything comparable to an AN/PRC-148 MBITR for civilian use that could also do frequency hopping to keep comms among my family relatively secure, as I'm under the impression there is no way hams can do encryption.
Like everyone else, I would just prefer to have the option for some means of relative privacy. Thanks guys. |
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Quoted:
By trade, I was taught to be a radio ninja in the military, but I'm new to the amateur side of the house. I just wanted to ask if the civilian market had anything comparable to an AN/PRC-148 MBITR for civilian use that could also do frequency hopping to keep comms among my family relatively secure, as I'm under the impression there is no way hams can do encryption. Like everyone else, I would just prefer to have the option for some means of relative privacy. Thanks guys. only thing I've seen have been some small walkie talkies.... let me find the link out of business from what I'm reading http://www.trisquare.us/ |
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There is ALE (Automatic Link Establishment) in the amateur world, that frequency hops. But the purpose of ALE is reliable contacts with another station, not necessarily hopping for the sake of privacy.
ps - ALE is for HF, I probably shouldn't have assumed that you meant HF! |
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NUCd got it in one. Trisquare was the only civilian hopping radio I am aware of (and being a prepper, I have about a dozen squirreled away.)
I know some folks make use of older Motorola Nextel phones as walkie-talkies, which should be much more secure than FRS would be. If the phone supports the Moto Talk feature, it can operate without the iDen / cell phone network in a direct peer-to-peer mode. Moto Talk phones are hoppers as well, but actually have a listen-only mode that's less secure than Trisquares would be since there's fewer code groups to hop on than trisquare. Edit: New discovery! Apparently Motorola has a handheld that uses the same protocol as the Moto Talk radios, the DTR series, so there's a second option to Trisquare! Here's one on Amazon, and like the Trisquares, it's a frequency hopping, 900 MHz ISM band license-free radio. Not cheap, but an option. |
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also remember, absolutely none of this is "Secure" as "we'd" think of it this isn't NSA Type 1 + freq hopping + ECCM  It seems as if encrypted wireless comms in civie hands is quite a rare breed. Other than than a few HT's with built in speech inverters the options aren't too plentiful. I'm sure that's by design. Probably the best security for civies is through obscurity....of frequency. (Don't break any laws). I suspect if secure comms were much more readily available it would make our jobs that much more difficult in these third world shitholes. I remember watching a NatGeo show or something in AFG that was following the troops, and they came across a local that had an "ICOM". (Not really sure it was an ICOM, but they referred to amateur handheld type radios with direct entry frequencies as ICOMS). Immediately this night shirt wearing gentleman was under extreme suspicion of being one of the bad guys. I can only imagine what a nightmare intel would become if suddenly all the mujaheddin were running around with frequency hopping spread spectrum encrypted handhelds. Although give it time.... Perhaps the Chinese will start turning out the Baofeng UV9RESS Encrypted Spread Spectrum HT for $50ea.....probably with a back door programmed in for them too. 
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So bottom line right now is find a Trisquare 900MHz hand held. Hedy Lamarr thanks you http://www.goldenhollywoodera.com/_files/Image/hedy_lamarr.jpg I got some site to store from walmart a couple years back but returned them prior to use... They felt very cheap, even cheaper then my current UV-5RA... Maybe I should have stashed them away to sell at a later date
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Quoted:
I got some site to store from walmart a couple years back but returned them prior to use... They felt very cheap, even cheaper then my current UV-5RA... Maybe I should have stashed them away to sell at a later date Quoted:
Quoted:
So bottom line right now is find a Trisquare 900MHz hand held. Hedy Lamarr thanks you http://www.goldenhollywoodera.com/_files/Image/hedy_lamarr.jpg I got some site to store from walmart a couple years back but returned them prior to use... They felt very cheap, even cheaper then my current UV-5RA... Maybe I should have stashed them away to sell at a later date They are not professional grade communications, they are consumer products. |
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Quoted:
By trade, I was taught to be a radio ninja in the military, but I'm new to the amateur side of the house. I just wanted to ask if the civilian market had anything comparable to an AN/PRC-148 MBITR for civilian use that could also do frequency hopping to keep comms among my family relatively secure, as I'm under the impression there is no way hams can do encryption. Like everyone else, I would just prefer to have the option for some means of relative privacy. Thanks guys. https://www.thalescomminc.com/ground/prc6809.asp |
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Like everyone else, I would just prefer to have the option for some means of relative privacy. Define "relative". Some nice Icom or Kenwood NXDN digital radios would have good performance and not many have the ability to receive NXDN. DMR digital radios are coming onto the market from some of the Chinese manufacturers at somewhat reasonable prices. Get an LMR license for an itinerant frequency or whatever and get rolling code scramblers or whatever you want. Frequency hopping isn't an option for most civilian uses due to licensing and spectrum management issues. It's possible with some restrictions on higher frequency amateur bands. |