Not sure Why your G5 is acting that way but there is no “on demand “ encryption on the FD side. I can ensure you as I have seen the actual radios in operation, and the encryption selector is actually used to scan and not encrypt. FD has two channels that are “strapped” with encryption, meaning you won’t here the units or dispatch. Those channels I believe are Hotel and India. On the radios the display shows as a 0 with a horizontal line though it. Those are Motorola APX 6000 radios that most FDs are using.
OK - that is interesting. Thanks for the feedback. I'll try to look more closely at what is happening here using other tools. Unfortunately, I'm not sure I'm going to get back north and close enough to use other radios to do this (I'm on the southern edge of Manatee for the next few days).
The G5 is receiving site 5 fairly well at most times from here with some garbling due to the signal strength. When it garbles, it seems to fade in and out - sometimes you can make out the voice. However, those times when it seems there is encryption in use, it clearly sounds (the entire voice call) as if it is encrypted noise to me (vs. the occasional weak signal "squeal"). I did note, however, that when I receive what sounds like encrypted voice, the radio does not display the encryption indicator that is in the latest firmware. Unication tells me that this encryption indicator may not occur for all types of encryption (which could be the reason) but perhaps as you say, this really isn't encryption (even though it certainly sounds like it)....
As far as site 12 that is what they use for FD MDC only. You should not hear any traffic on it. If you did it would probably be very short bursts of encryption but don’t know if a G5 would pass along any audio from that. Scanners will not hear anything.
You are correct - as I said, the G5 "roamed" itself over to Site 12 and the radio went silent. It was only once I investigated the silence that I found it had left site 5 and settled on site 12.
