Ive been dicking with murs recently and hamdheld to handheld it works good in the neighborhood inside and out of vehichles

VHF is good for open areas, UHF better for buildings and populated areas.

FRS has 22 frequencies that are shared with GMRS. Even if you high power a BF at 8 watts, which is above the legal limit, nobody is going to challenge you on the air because your range is less than two miles. There is no way to accurately measure power out in the wild. Behave and be courteous and nobody will care.

Now, GMRS has an additional 8 frequencies which doesn't mix with FRS. These are meant for repeater us.

GMRS is licensed but there isn't a test. Just submit a GMRS application with $70 to the FCC and you're licensed for 10 years.

I suggest everyone use https://signal.org as their texting app on your cellphone for end to end encryption with others also using it.

☝️

Agreed, it's so we'll encrypted that the creators can't hack it

Great alternative to SMS, but at the end of the day your phone is still spying on you, to the point that everything you type or see is being recorded regardless of what app you are using.

@Reno do you know if installing a custom ROM instead of Android OS will stop it?

@Bogs_Bunny I've heard that running a custom ROM without Google Play Services will help a lot, but even then it is trackable in many ways.

I guess it depends on your threat model.

Afaik going without Google Play Services will spare you from the Google botnet but you are still vulnerable through your hardware and firmware.

For example, I'm no Edward Snowden, so I'm sure they're not going to get the supercomputers fired up to crack my YouTube password

I have practically zero knowledge of hardware and firmware exploits to spy on me sadly.

A lot of them are there by design, e.g. Intel Management Engine in modern PCs.

@Reno what about AMD?

More of a backdoor but you see what i'm saying

AMD has PSP now which is like the same thing but they didn't implement it until 2012 or so

Ah. Well shit. Lol. At least I use Linux.

That will help a lot just like running a custom ROM instead of government spyware

Especially a libre distribution like Trisquel or Void.

I use a mainstream one, Linux Mint.

Nothing wrong with that. You're in better shape than me right now I'm running winblows

I have win10 on a separate hard drive for video games, but yeah Linux is my every day.

Vidya is the only reason I'm still using this crap haha

Do you think apple "refusing" to help feds break into encrypted phones was an act?

Yes. I would wager it was to make people think that their phones are safe.

Let me get started on the comms faq. Entry #1, buttfangs are shite.

Gib me one on far left plz

I love Motorola’s

I’m happier with the APX 4k than I thought I would be. I used to have a 7000XE and loved it.

All but one of those has AES-256 encryption. 4th from left has NVG compatible display and its too dark to see on camera.

@redbeard I've been looking at the APX series, but I've always held off because I have 25 licensed UHF channels from the FCC and most of the people I work with use standard UHF channels.

And I'm not really trying to buy a bunch of them, lol.

@redbeard why are baofengs bad I’m still a newb working towards my license and have a GT3TP.

They aren't bad, they are cheap... 99.9% of people will be just fine with them or a standard HT from another Chinese or Japanese manufacturer.

Getting even business band channels licensed is expensive, and P25 digital even more so. If you're just talking with your crew, the FRS bands tend to be fine for most.

I programmed mine with a variety of things repeaters FRS MURS and simplex

NOAA too

Yeah, that's what most people do... with any HT you're limited in range anyway unless you setup your own repeaters, or have some local to you. But you're still on open airwaves anyway.

I guess so as long as you’re talking to people you know you can always talk in code