I would like to know what type of radio she purchased and from the exact source.
John McCain’s POTUS campaign honcho, Steve Schmidt, is the Control Operator of three Digital Mobile Radio (DMR) repeaters in the Northern Virginia area. (per FCC database)
Using DMR, Nellie’s female voice would be converted to a bitstream that could be decoded with a radio with similar settings. However, the radio could be easily reprogrammed to make the bitstream (transmitted in modulated analog) undecodable by an amateur operator. Or, the repeater could catch her weak 5 watt signal and then broadcast out (at upto 1500 watts with a high tower and high gain antenna) a digital signal that had been deeply encrypted.
However, one of the Q drops indicated that her ham radio communications had been intercepted by the good guys. It would be very easy for a three letter agency to crack the digital code, especially if they caught her weak signal before it had been encrypted by the repeater.
Interesting info.
If she was using it for disaster preparedness, then I am the King of Monaco.