Showing posts with label UHF. Show all posts
Showing posts with label UHF. Show all posts

14 April 2026

Commercial Digital Trunked Radio Scanning


Recently, a small program called DSD+ released a free version of the software allowing following of digital trunked radio systems with only one sdr dongle.  Previous versions of this program required two dongles in order to effectively follow the trunk transmission and voice transmissions simultaneously.  I've been playing with it at home, monitoring the ski resort, power company, and most interesting to me, the public safety radio network.

Alaska Land Mobile Radio (ALMR) is a P25 Phase II/TDMA VHF radio network covering most of Southcentral Alaska, up to Fairbanks, and down the panhandle to Juneau.  The municipality of Anchorage has a complimentary system, referred to as Anchorage Wide Area Radio Network (AWARN) on 700MHz covering the Anchorage borough and networked with ALMR to transparently pass traffic.  It never fails to surprise me how much information leaks out of the system.  As shown in the picture above, each site advertises who it is, who their neighbors are and what frequencies their control channels are, and shown in the picture below, the health of the network.

Even if a voice channel is encrypted, the network will still tell you what radios are in the area based on who is subscribed to that particular repeater, and who is talking to who, since by necessity each radio has a unique ID number.  While I don't have a transmit capable sdr to verify this, I have read of attacks where individual radios respond to spoofed network pings without notifying the user.  Such an attack would make DFing of a targeted radio trivial with a transmitter and a Kraken, although the attacker would have to have done their homework beforehand and be transmitting themselves, opening them up to potential counter-attack.

Another potential attack vector would be what amounts to a wifi deauth attack, where a jamming station monitors a site or multiple sites for subscription requests and immediately sends a corresponding unsubscribe request, effectively conducting targeted jamming of a repeater at a lower power level than dumb blanket jamming.

All of this would constitute comparatively sophisticated attack vectors.  To date, I am unaware of any such attacks occurring in the wild.

09 September 2025

Cross Reference of Radio Services Avalable to the Individual

 The CERT group in my hometown has become interested in radios for its members.  It always comes back to the question of "who do you want to talk to and how far do you want to talk?"  Therefore, I generated a basic chart of radio services available to the average person (that is, not business band or anything esoteric).  I tried to cite CFR where available, but keep in mind when reading this, it is a generalization.

 

 


Citizens Band
(95.901)
FRS
(95.501)
MURS
(95.2701)
GMRS
(95.1701)
Amateur Technician Class
(Part 97)
Frequency Range
Low VHF
27MHz
UHF
460MHz
VHF
150MHz
UHF
460MHz
Low VHF and up
29MHz+
Channels 40 22 5
30
Note: shared with FRS except for repeater channels
Unlimited (Subject to local band plan agreements)
License Required
No.  License by FCC rule
No. License by FCC rule.  Secondary user, so subject to interference from primary licensees. No. License by FCC rule. Secondary user, so subject to interference from primary licensees. Yes. $35 license for 10 year term. No test required. License covers licensee + 'family' (95.1705) Yes. $35 non-refundable fee and 35 question test for 10 year term. License covers individual only.
Maximum Power /
Expected Range
4 watts (AM)
12 watts (SSB)
Realistic range in rural environment 10-20 mi?
2 watts. Range arbitrarily limited by fixed antenna requirement. Realistic range in rural environment 3-5 mi? 2 watts. Range may be extended by improved external antenna, but no repeaters permitted. Realistic range in rural environment 5-7 mi? 50 watts. Range may be extended by external antenna and repeaters. Simplex range in rural environment 15-25 mi?
1500 watts. Sub bands may have lower limits. 50+mi range simplex in ideal conditions. Repeaters and linking can arbitrarily extend range.
Data No (95.971) Yes (95.531(a)) Yes (95.2731 (a) and (b)) Yes (95.1731 (d)) All analog and digital emission types permitted*
Type Accepted Equipment Availability
Inexpensive vehicle mount systems commonly available. Handheld units uncommon with relatively poor performance due to antenna size. Inexpensive handheld units commonly available. Units capable of data transfer uncommon. Inexpensive handheld units commonly available. Units capable of data transfer uncommon. Inexpensive handheld units commonly available. Vehicle mount systems available. Repeater systems commercially available. FCC type acceptance not required.