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Man, respectfully, I do not believe that at all. I think someone is telling you a tall tale or they failed to communicate what’s really going on (no pun intended).
Last I checked, the entire electromagnetic spectrum is accounted for by the FCC and I don’t remember privately paid channels being allotted. You can’t hide a frequency from the public. Anyone can listen in. On some frequencies you must be licensed to transmit.
That’s not to say encryption isn’t possible, it certainly is, but in order to do that you must 1.) have the technical expertise to run it (sorry, I don’t believe fishing guides in Shell Beach…or anywhere in Louisiana…are that sophisticated or willing to spend $$$ on that resource) and 2.) you need to be licensed by the FCC to do it. Otherwise it’s illegal and with a 25-watt bay station you’re begging to get DF’d. Anyone with the expertise to set up encryption would certainly know the legality of it and the likelihood that they’d get busted.
Maybe there’s a HAM guy in here who can chime in.
My expertise in radio comes from my time in the military as an RTO (Radio Telephone Operator), working everything from HF to UHF to satellite comms, then as an RTO at the State Department (mostly VHF) and, of course, a little bit as a charter captain in Shell Beach.
Encrypted, plain text, single channel, frequency hopping, relays, repeaters, you name it. Old radios from Vietnam to (at the time) modern SINCGARS radios, Motorola APX radios (encrypted), all kinds of jammers, and even a little ATAK.
I’ll admit that my experience guiding didn’t really do much for gaining experience using radio: it installs on the console and you press a button and talk. Not much to it. I’ll also admit that I’ve data-dumped a lot of what I know. It’s been a long time.
But I regularly have dinner with a friend who works for a major defense contractor specializing in communications that’s provided for <insert .mil/.gov> and is deployed to that place where there’s a proxy war and whenever we hang out we are talking about radio. And I just talked to him and he agrees with me: no one in Shell Beach has a private radio frequency.
Someone is either jerking your chain (and now you know how to call them out) or they are confused about what they are using.
Now that I think about it, it sounds like what they got is a repeater, or relay. That’s something you can pay for. I’m not sure about licensing or keeping people off of it. Otherwise I could see the utility for it in far reaches like Breton Sound.
