The function is not a scrambler as far as I'm aware but it does distort the audio coming from the radio so any receiving radios without it turned on receive audio that is unreadable in most parts.
As I said in Chirp there does not seem to be a way to enable beat shift for some reason. I looked through all the menus and came up with nothing so if anyone knows a way then please let me know.I did some searching in Google and found a piece of software on Baofengs website called BF-480. I'd never heard of this software or even the radio which I assume is one of Baofengs earlier models pictured left. I downloaded the software and had a nightmare to convert it to English from Chinese... I say Chinese, it is really all strange symbols and question marks. Anyhow I managed to change it over and fill out all the parameters that I wanted in the radio.
It offers all the features that Chirp does such as RX frequency, TX frequency, CTCSS, DCS, power output, wide or narrow deviation, scan and of course beat shift! I wrote the data to the radio and gave them a go and surprisingly the function works very well. Radios programmed back to back transmit and receive each other just as they should and listening on another radio, the beat shift function disguises what is being said enough to make it virtually unintelligible.
I've included information and a screen grab for both pieces of software below.
BF-480 software download: Click here.
Chirp software download: Click here.
Download the software at your own risk, I accept no responsibility to any damage caused to computers or radios should you use this software. However it works great for me so there shouldn't be a problem.
Video version of this blog entry below:
73's, Lewis M3HHY.
Manchester, UK.
CHIRP now allows beatshift to be enabled
ReplyDeleteIf you right click a channel in Chirp, you can go to "properties" and in that window, there's a tab called "Other"
ReplyDeleteIn that tab is "Busy Channel Lockout" and "Beat Shift(scramble)"