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Encryption selection help????

Posted: Sun Nov 09, 2003 12:15 pm
by n9upc
Greetings,

The age old encryption problem question is coming up again. Here's the scenario: Have a customer who owns/runs a business repeater as they do not get good cellular coverage for anyone in that area. They exchange information but now notice that more is starting to become sensitive in nature so they want to run encryption.
They have a motorola micor but are running everything from Motorola to Kenwood to Vertex so Motorola only encryption is not possible. (aka DES, DVP, DVI, etc...) Also since the repeater is not set-up that way voice inversion will really be the only way to go as they do not want to upgrade the repeater/radios.
They really do not want to spend a whole chunk of change on encryption boards as they will use it only once in awhile and just some quick info exchange.
Know I have played with the transcript SC-400 boards before and found that the audio is totally out of wack and sucks when in non-secure mode. Just a slight tocuh of the volume knob will cause it to from very quiet to almost blarring in a matter of seconds.

So my question finally is what encryption do people recommend and use on the following radios which will not send the person needing to get a loan???? The following radios are what they are possibly looking to put encryption into:

Motorola HT1000
Motorola HT1250
Motorola HT750
Motorola Spectra
Motorola Syntor X9000

Kenwood TK-290
Kenwood TK-790
Kenwood TK-780

Vertex VX-800V

Once again any help and info would be great.

Posted: Sun Nov 09, 2003 3:39 pm
by mr-fordtruck
my guess is they me be sol to get all radios up and running with somethinb but I would check with Selectone and they may have something like rolling code inverstion boards or plain old inversion boards that will work in some of the units. - good uck

Posted: Sun Nov 09, 2003 3:52 pm
by natedog224
Any "Motorola" encryption for any of those radios is gonna send them out to get a loan.
:-?
Look at spectra for example. If you buy new parts from Moto for really any encryption type it will run about $800 - $1.2k per radio. Ouch.

Motorola cost I would estimate about $60 - $80 at the most probably to manufacture each carrier + hybrid. Then they mark it up 1500% and call it good. :(

Secure boards

Posted: Mon Nov 10, 2003 5:05 am
by 1 Adam 12
Midian is another company, you could try...but Transcrypt is gonna be your best bet.... despite the problem you described which I have never encountered they have been used heavily around here and also they offer both a compatible board and wiring and install assistance for most of those models including one or two plugs ins. You may do some radio and repeater touch ups to make it work properly.

Posted: Mon Nov 10, 2003 9:08 am
by Bill Rogers
We have only tried midian once and transcrypt once. The Midian was used on an HT1250 and a CDM1550 and we had nothing but problems. (rolling code encryption). We then went to Transcrypt using an HT1250 and an HT1000 and it works really well! The Transcrypt was a little more but we would never go back. Bill.

g

Posted: Thu Nov 20, 2003 5:55 pm
by RADIOMAN2002
The very first thing you do with any of the rolling code boards is make the audio sound good in simplex. Rolling code has a tendancy of going ape with preemp/deemp on most radios. Once that has been done then you modify the repeater for as flat an audio you can get out of it,(with the Micor repeater the flat audio card used in paging transmitters comes to mind) BTW a good way to keep the audio sounding good on both clear and scramble is to use 2 different input PL tones, one for clear which will use the pre/deemp built in to the repeater, and another code to turn them off for scramble.