this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2023
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We use the same licensed VHF network at work for the last 30 years. Ever since our local cops switched to 'digital', 'encrypted' radio comms, we regularly pick them up on our VHFs across the entire district, regardless of what frequency we are on.
It's like their whole thing is leaking across the bands, which should not be possible given that it's encrypted but here we are. If it were anyone else, we'd be pursuing them for abusing the frequency band that we pay for but it doesn't feel like a battle that we want to start.
Just out of curiosity, when you say you "regularly pick them up", is it intelligible audio (clear voice conversations) or is it the digital modulation that's leaking over to your freqs? I don't have a good answer for the first problem since that shouldn't be possible unless there's an open patch somewhere that shouldn't be enabled, but I can 100% believe the second problem. In either case, it's poor practice from the radio maintainer of the offending system... and it's illegal regardless since their license is not valid for out-of-band transmissions and the modulation format is probably not licensed for use on those freqs. You'd be surprised, but FCC enforcement will take that very seriously.