Author Topic: newbie: encryption on pocsag messages (?)  (Read 12463 times)

neuronetv

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newbie: encryption on pocsag messages (?)
« on: 03 Mar 2014, 16:42:14 »
I'm in the UK and I've noticed on some pocsag frequencies the messages are garbled, eg:
?4Q4r?1r??4p1?h41$5??52??H?5S0QT?HlM-?
and
?4Q4r?1r??4p1?h41$5??52??H?5S0QT?HlM-?
I got a lot of this garble on 138.075. Is this a sign of encryption? or is it just crap reception/decoding?
On other frequencies I get much better results with plain english and clear text. I'm using PDW 3.14 on windows 7.

VidarParry

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Re: newbie: encryption on pocsag messages (?)
« Reply #1 on: 04 Mar 2014, 10:26:54 »
Hi,
That looks like message corruption to me.

Heaps of possible causes - RF interference/weak signal, dodgy cables, dodgy scanner, discriminator hiccup, USB driver, Windows 7 timing interference.

But I've been proved wrong before:-)

Cheers
...Steve

neuronetv

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Re: newbie: encryption on pocsag messages (?)
« Reply #2 on: 04 Mar 2014, 17:21:13 »
ok thanks for your response. It puzzles me I might be getting message corruption because in the visual interface provided by the icom software the signal is coming in nice and strong. I get nice clear text on other frequencies so I can't really blame cables, scanner, discrim port or drivers etc. What also puzzles me is that 90% of the messages on some frequencies are garbled so I was wondering if some frequencies are specifically reserved for encrypted messages.

marcashton

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Re: newbie: encryption on pocsag messages (?)
« Reply #3 on: 22 Mar 2014, 16:56:24 »
I also get the same on 138.075 so I guess they are encrypted. I run a filter to exclude these items to reduce the size of the logfile.