Lscott

Each radio model series has its own specific software package. To recommend where to find it we first need to know what model radio. The installation key typically has the form of xxK44… or xxxK44… where the “X’s” are the version of the software. For example the TK-3170 radios use KPG-101D and the install license key starts with 101K44…. with a string of numbers after the “101K44”. If you’re very lucky you might have the so-called “engineers key” which looks like “101K45….” for the above example. The engineers key allows you to remove passwords on a radio. If the radio has a write data password set you’ll never be able to reprogram the radio unless you have it or can remove it. I’ve had a few radios purchased used like this. Fortunately I had the means to remove them.

There are plenty of Kenwood commercial HT’s that cover MURS. Most of the VHF ones work from 136 MHz to 174 MHz. That covers the complete Ham 2M band, MURS, NOAA weather channels, VHF marine and railroad analog. In my collection of HT’s that cover the range are the TK-2000, TK-2160, TK-2360, TK-2140, TK-2170, NX-200. These are all 5W/1W with wide and narrow band FM. The TK-270G officially goes from 150 MHz to 174 MHz but can be pushed down into the Ham band. None are certified for MURS. Some “might” be legally used since they were certified before MURS was created. This is a very gray area. In any case one has to watch the bandwidth and power levels. There are not many MURS specific radios available.

There are already illegal cross band repeaters operating between MURS and GMRS for exactly the reason above. I think it would be a better bet going digital, DMR. There are SFR, single frequency repeaters that take advantage of the dual time slot nature of DMR. The repeaters don’t need expensive tuned cavity filters. No new frequencies are necessary either. Being narrow band, 12.5KHz wide channels, it might be possible to spilt one or two of the existing wide band repeater frequency pairs into two channels. One or two SFR’s could operate on one of the existing analog input frequencies and the same with the output frequencies. Thus one old analog repeater frequency pairs could accommodate up to four digital SFR systems. One could “sell” this to the FCC as making better use of the current spectrum while simplifying the the system hardware making it more accessible to the general public.

You can have all the "Op Sec" you want but if a hostile party DF's your location because they figure you got radios, and so might have other valuable goodies, then show up. Getting found on the air is an invitation to come and check you out. Heck, they might just want your radios!

Besides the encryption topic the second is keeping the radios operating. If you can't power up the radios they're useless. A good SHTF plan requires some thought about emergency power. In my case I have a number of LFP, Lithium Iron Phosphate (LiFePO4), battery packs, solar panels and charge controllers. I prefer the LFP battery packs since you can charge these up and let them sit around for months, in some cases a year or more, without them self discharging to a large degree. Lead acid batteries you can't do that, you will ruin them very quickly. Also the LFP battery packs the output voltage holds up over most of the capacity range, at the start around 13.3-13.4 VDC, and when you get down to about 10 percent state of charge it's around 12.8 VDC whereas a lead acid type might be around 10 VDC. Most mobile equipment is spec'd at 13.8 VDC +/- 15 percent so the lower limit is 11.7 VDC. I would recommend an MPPT charge controller setup for the LFP battery packs. Don't try using the lead acid types, the battery packs won't charge correctly. https://www.bioennopower.com/collections/12v-series-lifepo4-batteries https://www.renogy.com/ https://sunforgellc.com/genasun/ I have a number of 50 watt, 30 watt, 20 watt and a number of small 10 watt panels. Some of the panels I picked up at Ham Radio flea market sales. I use the GV-5 MPPT charge controller for LFP batteries. The battery packs are 6 amp-hour for portable use and one main 40 amp-hour for stationary use. To connect everything together I built a number of extension cables and adapters using Anderson Power Pole connectors. https://powerwerx.com/

This is a bit more complicated. There are various types of encryption, digital and analog. Any radio(s) you get with the idea of using encryption during a SHTF emergency all radios need to be using the same type. The simple ones using voice inversion isn't exactly that simple either. Some radios use a fixed frequency for the voice inversion while others allow you to input your own custom inversion frequencies. The radios that use a single frequency will very likely NOT have that frequency documented thus making it far more difficult to get different manufactures radios to work together if at all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_inversion Digital encryption is even more of a mess. While there are standards, such as AES256, there are others that are proprietary to a given manufacture, and this isn't limited to the cheap radios. Some of the encryption methods are limited due to the US ITAR export restrictions, thus are hard to find, expensive to buy/license or simply not available. https://www.cise.ufl.edu/~mssz/Class-Crypto-I/Housekeeping/export-control.html While high end standards like AES256 likely isn't necessary for security it could be from an inter-operational standpoint. One form on another site a person was asking about if some of the DMR Chinese radios can communicate with Motorola's Mototrbo radios using digital encryption. At the basic level of Motorola's digital encryption the answer was no, however some were successful using the higher end AES256 since this is a standard. Then to make things even more of a mess you have the various digital voice formats. Another one is NXDN for example where the standard has provisions for 15 encryption keys included in the protocol, and optional AES and DES can be used. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NXDN With some of the commercial radios, where you find the most options for digital encryption, it's an extra cost feature and requires the installation of an encryption hardware module or "activation key" in software to enable the hardware. Then to use it requires a special cable and or "key loader" to input the encryption keys. https://kenwoodcommunications.co.uk/acc/modules/KWD-AE21 NEXEDGE AES/DES Encryption Module/ https://kenwoodcommunications.co.uk/acc/modules/KWD-AE31 AES/DES Encryption Module/ https://csrc.nist.gov/csrc/media/projects/cryptographic-module-validation-program/documents/security-policies/140sp2200.pdf https://www.radioandtrunking.com/midian-encryption.html Some of the Chinese radios don't make you go through this crap, example the D878UV HT's.

if VHF != UHF { UHF *= 10db_gain; }

I’ve also never had issues going to Canada with my Ham gear. At most the US customs were the ones asking questions. If the radio has Industry Canada certification you shouldn’t have a problem. One other thing, out on the western provinces they have radio resource roads where you need a VHF radio to safely drive on them. I’m not aware of anything like that in the US. https://radiofreeq.wordpress.com/2018/08/30/canada-vhf-ladd-channel-list/

This is a good reference on passive repeaters. https://www.softwright.com/faq/engineering/Catolog 161A - Screen.pdf Might be a fun experiment to use a small Yagi directional antenna to bounce signals off a local water tower. While not flat it could spread the signals out enough to cover a wide area.

From the quoted message it would seem like those radios are mine. They’re not. These are below. And this isn’t everything either. I have some base and mobile radios not in the photo. There are a few more HT’s I keep sitting around the home office too. The HT’s are mostly Kenwood, a few different Chinese and a few Motorola’s. Since a mention was made about digital I have radios for D-Star, DMR, P25 and NXDN so far. No System Fusion yet. What I can say about radios is you get what you pay for, and in the cheaper models maybe not even that. If you’re going to bet your safety or life on a radio don’t go cheap.

Yeah, and they can have an FCC engineer there using calibrated equipment to measure the RF field strength and determine who the winner is to receive the top prize of a $10,000 plus fine.

The very high gain antennas have a narrow “beam” in a radial direction perpendicular to the antenna. If you’re in a hilly or mountainous area likely this is not what you want. The better choice is a lower gain antenna with a much wider beam pattern in this case. In flat county side, yes a high gain antenna is good and up as high as you can get it. The curious thing with this setup is close in coverage is not so good. That’s due to the very narrow beam shoots over the top of the close in receiver’s antenna. Some guys buy a special antenna that has several degrees of “down tilt” in repeater applications to help negate the problem. https://www.pasternack.com/t-calculator-antenna-downtilt.aspx

A 100 foot run of LMR 400 at 450MHz has a loss of 2.7db. That means only 53.7 percent of your power makes it to the antenna. If you run 100 feet of 1/2 inch LDF at the same frequency the loss is only 1.5 db, or 70.7 percent of your power makes it to the antenna. Whatever loss you have in the cable has to be made up by gain in the antenna at least.

Most likely the modulation level. Some of my commercial radios have a similar setting. I turn up the gain on those since my voice is rather soft so I don't need to "eat" the radio's mic input to be heard. Now I can use the radio at a comfortable distance from my mouth and get good audio levels on the receiving radio.

No, don’t have a law degree. The question about is there any reason why a privacy code might be used during an emergency so I offered up a possible reason. At least it gets people thinking.

That’s not the FCC grant sent to the manufacturer. As other people have discovered the fccid.io site has shown inaccurate information at times.

Well if the frequency is busy the emergency communication center personal has to monitor several radios. It gets stressful trying to tell if the current traffic is directed to the communication center or between other units. If you use a privacy code so only traffic that is directed to the communication center personal gets through takes a load off them. When they hear something they'll know for sure it's for them and not SAR unit members asking each other if anybody wants a break to get coffee and donuts.

That seems to be the current practice. More than one poster has mentioned the FCC is mainly reactive, complaint driven, enforcement action. They don't have the staff to hunt down every minor rules infraction.

Until it happens. Just because you don't see anything in the FCC enforcement logs doesn't imply there hasn't been any "unofficial" contact with a strong suggestion to stop what they are doing. While the probability is low it's not zero. People are free to chose however it wouldn't be ethical not to mention it. At least they can make a more informed decision. Maybe at some point the FCC will get around to allowing Part 90 radios to be "officially" used on GMRS even if they never had any Part 95 certification. One can hope and keep sending the FCC petitions to that effect.

FCC.io is good for a quick check. But as you discovered the FCC database is the "gold standard". If it isn't there it's not real.

Don't under estimate how many people you talk to on the radio are sitting at their computer, or smart phone, punching in your call sign into QRZ or the FCC search engine as you speak. A few ding-dongs have been found out high-jacking somebody's else's call-sign or using one that doesn't even exist. The FCC database is more interesting because it shows your license class. More than one Ham got caught on band segments that they don't hold the proper license class to use. You can't tell from the call sign format. I never changed mine from when I had a Tech Class license.

Nope. You had better luck than me. When I checked it didn't find anything. Yeah it looks like its certified for GMRS.

Not from what I see at that link. While the top section might show Part 95E but scroll all the way to the bottom and you'll see it's ONLY certified as Part 15B. That last part is they only thing that counts, the grant the FCC issues to the manufacture. This looks like the certification for Ham equipment, which typically only gets Part 15. Likely they applied for Part 95E, top of web page, but haven't received it as yet. This link shows what you should see. It's for one of the favorite commercial radios people buy for GMRS. These are really nice radios for GMRS by the way, built like a brick, fairly light and fit in a shirt pocket. I have a few. https://fccid.io/ALH34713110 http://www.swscomm.com/kenwood/TK-2170_3170.pdf If you look at the brochure's last page near the bottom left area the FCC ID's for the different models are conveniently listed. If you look at the bottom of the page for the issued grant you'll see it has Part 95A, which at the time was the section for GMRS until the FCC revamped the rules a few years ago.

Ask your nearest FCC field office. I'm sure they would be delighted to point things out for you. If anybody has a question about their radio a simple check on he following site should be enough to answer the question. https://apps.fcc.gov/oetcf/eas/reports/GenericSearch.cfm Enter in the FCC ID for the radio as required, search, then check the grant and see what parts it's certified for by the FCC. If Part 95A (old rules) or Part 95E (new rules) is not shown then technically it can't be used. There is no wiggle room. People are using Part 90 radios on GMRS and so far the FCC has ignored it. However if they so choose to fine somebody, well, by the rules it never was legal so they took their chances.

That's petty much exactly what the rules say and requires. You would be surprised by how many people do in fact have multiple radios for the various services. It's common. We have one or more individuals on this form who feel that's rather inconvenient and look for creative ways to circumvent FCC regulations. Are they likely to get away with it? Yes, but if they do get busted I have some very serious doubts the administrative court would agree with their arguments. Paying attorney fees, court costs and the likely $10,000 FCC fine is an expensive way to test their arguments where it really matters.