Hi. I am looking for general recommendations some handheld radios and a compatible small table top (or car installable) radio that will:
1) handle a large bandwidth or have the ability to be modified (remove diode, etc..) to handle a large bandwidth.
2) communicate via aes-256 bit encryption.
I am not looking to use these now. I am looking to pack them in my bug out bag should future years ever call for a survival situation.
Does anyone have any recommendations?
Thank you.
A wise man once said, if you wait until an emergency to use your radios, you will usually find that when there is an emergency that the radio doesn't work, or you don't know how to use it!
I heard no mention of any sort of license, if you want to operate on more then FRS - which limits you to the .5 watt Motorola Bubble Pack radios, you need to obtain some type of license.
Amateur radio involves getting all of your users licensed, something I have not been able to do, even on a small scale.
GMRS involves buying licenses for each family that wants to use it.
Free Banding - a term borrowed from The Citizens Band, is not a viable option.
As far as that goes, you will attract a lot less attention being a licensed user in any radio service then being a Bootlegger and operating where you do not belong.
If your reason for wanting encryption is for secure communications, the easiest way to be discovered would be to operate with a mode that others cannot listen to.
When you interfere with a licensed service, it tends to bring people out of the woodwork that will go out of their way to find you and take your radios off of you.
Even just not understanding the band plan, will sometimes get you into trouble.
I see this mentality all the time, where people believes that in a disaster that no one will care what you do with radio. When in fact, the first place most people will turn is radio.
Two way radio for most practical purposes is dead.
Cell Phones out numbers two way radios 1000 to 1.
What most people discovers is that in an emergency, those 1/2 watt vs 1 watt bubble pack radios, only has a range of about 100 yards to 4 miles.
Sometimes you can be 1/4 of a mile around the side of a hill and have no reception.
Adding digital to the mix, makes it even worse for reception.
Analog will get through where digital might not.
These are things that must be practiced to learn how terrain affects your signal.
It isn't like a cell phone where all you have to do is buy something and use it.
Cell phones works because someone went to the bother to put up the cell tower and maintain that tower and equipment and ensure that other users on a similar frequency or harmonic does not degrade it's signals. I have a local 2 meter repeater here that is too close in frequency to another repeater 65 miles away and 5 kc's away - with no PL.
If I key the 146.665 repeater here, it also keys the 146.670 repeater 65 miles away, and the two heterodyne's in my receiver, rendering both repeaters unusable.