Another Note On The Baofeng DMR, by Bravo51

I just read the article you posted about the Baofeng DM-1701 by Captain Atilla, and I wanted to share some information with you. A little food for thought for OPSEC if you will.

If you are using a DMR product for critical comms, make sure you do one of two different things in the programming.

For the DM-1701, click on, “Digit Emergency System” and make sure, “Radio Disable Decode”, “Remote Monitor Decode”, and “Emergency Remote Monitor Decode” are all unchecked. If any of these three are checked, it will allow a remote radio to Disable your radio, remotely monitor your audio (your radio will PTT and transmit audio), or decode your audio if the radio enters the Emergency Mode.

There are reasons to leave “Radio Disable Decode” checked, but you MUST have unique ID’s for each radio. If all of your radios have the same ID “1234” (as written in the article by Captain Atilla), a simple Disable Command sent to Radio ID 1234 from a remote radio will Disable all of the radios with ID 1234. If you have a unique radio ID for each radio, YOU can disable a lost or stolen radio remotely. This can happen even if you are using encryption as the radio ID’s aren’t encrypted.

I’m not sure if amateur radios have the ability to send the Disable and enable commands, but commercial radios such as Motorola certainly do have the ability.

By NC ScoutPublished On: October 7, 2020Categories: Comms, Guest Authors1 Comment

About the Author: NC Scout

NC Scout is the nom de guerre of a former Infantry Scout and Sergeant in one of the Army’s best Reconnaissance Units. He has combat tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He teaches a series of courses focusing on small unit skills rarely if ever taught anywhere else in the prepping and survival field, including his RTO Course which focuses on small unit communications. In his free time he is an avid hunter, bushcrafter, writer, long range shooter, prepper, amateur radio operator and Libertarian activist. He can be contacted at [email protected] or via his blog at brushbeater.wordpress.com .