FreeRadius + MySQL characters being converted to HEX

[Steve Staples]

I do apologize if this has been asked (I did search, but found nothing
definitive, or it was my poor searching skills).

We are storing all the radius accounting into MySQL, and thus far, have
not had any real issues.  I was asked the other day, why some of the
cisco-avpairs attributes were showing up like:
connect-progress=3DLAN Ses Up

there were some other attributes that get these =HEX values passed and
stored, and what I am wondering is, is that in the flat files, it gets
stored as 
connect-progress=LAN Ses Up  ('=3D' translates to '=')

but in MySQL, it gets parsed/translated to the '=3D' style.  How do I go
about storing this as the '=' and not the '=3D' as well as all the other
attribute values that get parsed/translated to hex characters?

It doesn't appear to be the MySQL that is changing it, it looks like it
is from the FreeRadius side... but I could be wrong.

Thanks in advance,

Steve.