Prep Comms - FRS Mini-Series Finale: Where FRS Fits in Your Family Communication Plan

Episode Date: September 9, 2025

FRS radios are a great start, but they aren’t the whole plan. They work for kids, neighbors, and short-range use — but when the storm hits or the grid goes down, you may need more. In this episode, Caleb Nelson (K4CDN) explains how FRS fits into a complete family communication plan, including: The strengths and limits of FRS radios How GMRS, MURS, and ham radio build on that foundation Why thinking in layers — the Cascade Protocol — makes families stronger How National Preparedness Month is the right time to move from gear to plan FRS is a tool worth having, and combined with clarity, it's what keeps families connected. Mentioned in this episode: BTECH FRS-A1: https://amzn.to/3UTnjgK Retevis RT15: https://amzn.to/3UTedki Retevis RB66P: https://amzn.to/4mIRbZt Retevis RB48: https://amzn.to/47HOP8T Motorola Waterproof FRS: https://amzn.to/4g5oV0Q Family Connect System Webinar Replay: www.familyconnectsystem.com

Coffee's good this morning and welcome to the prepcoms podcast. I'm Caleb Nelson, your host K4 CDN, and we're talking FRS radios. This is the fourth episode in the little FRS mini series. And we've done a series on CB radio, M-U-R-S radio. You go back before those, we did series on listening devices, our radios and devices you could listen to. We moved from there into CB radio. You can talk on CB, you can talk on MERS. Now we're talking to FRS, talking about talking.

And this is really, it's kind of a weird spot because this is the first step, although it's number three in the series, if you will, that we've been doing. there's a reason for that and we'll talk about it next time but here's the deal FRS radios are a great source of communication learning and communications period okay we've talked about the history of it we've talked about where it came from how families can use it what gear works what gear really may may not work you know I've got all kind of suggestions and whatever in the show notes but this time I want to I want to get like in the dirt with FRS, and that doesn't mean I'm going to disparage it as a service

because I think it's key. I think it's a key part of what we're talking about here, but you've got to know it's a great tool, but it's not enough. Okay. How am I going to get myself out of that, right? So I've been encouraging over the last three shows, if you don't have these, get them. Okay. The reason being is there are a lot of people that are listening who have nothing.

so this FRS radio is better than nothing and they're $20 a set so you can literally buy these for less than $10 a piece you're going to spend more than that on batteries but you can do it and you can have something you look out the front door to the left you look out the front door to the right and across the street and more than likely those people have nothing so if you do something you're ahead of your neighbors not that we're in a competition I'm just saying the majority of people in the U.S. don't think about this stuff. You're here at prep comms to learn about preparedness communication, so you're ahead of them. But FRS is a great tool, but it's not enough.

All right? Think about a ladder. It's the very first rung on the ladder. And you're like, wait, we talked about CB first. We sure did. We got it out of the way. You talked about MERS next. Yeah, we got it out of the way.

It's a great service. I love it. Maybe one of my favorite ones that's available to you, but it's not the first rung on the ladder. and why? Well, you just have to look at it's like an economics thing. It's supply and demand. FRS is the first rung on the ladder because it's the cheapest and it's the most readily available. Okay, you can go right now to Walmart and buy a really nice set of Midlands. I think there's three of them in there for 70 bucks. Now, those are really good ones. Okay. You can buy the Walmart own brand. I think a pair is less than $24. haulers and those will those will be fine for you and your kids so this is literally the first rung

of the ladder and if this is all you have you have so much okay but at the same time if it is all you ever intend to have you may be disappointed down the road okay so you it's like having more than nothing but not having too much more than nothing okay so if you're only talking neighborhood backyard neighborhood park, shopping mall, maybe a medium small theme park, something like that, you're good. You're good. If you're thinking across town, if you're thinking over a couple of counties, you're going to be vastly disappointed. But in the end, when you have something in your hand that works and you know how to use it, you're so much further ahead than most people who have nothing. Okay. I know it's an oxymoron. I might have been called an ox and I might have been called a moron. I'm not talking about me. I'm talking about it works, but it doesn't work great. Okay. The FRS radio frequencies were opened up in the FCC from the FCC to us in the 1990s, like 1996. And it was kind of like, hey, we've got these frequencies that nobody's using. Somebody probably lobbied probably one of these radio manufacturers like, hey, we could sell some radios.

if you'll give us those frequencies and here we are you know 30 years later and people it was really big when it first came out although they were a hundred dollars a set i bought them i've showed them to you um people still use them again because they're cheap like you can literally buy them for less than 10 dollars a piece now and um they work great especially if you're camping riding bikes in the neighborhood uh yard sales block parties church parking groups i mean it's it's vastly used all over. It's simple and cheap, and it will get people used to using a radio walkie-talkie without having to sit down and read a manual. These are the kind of radios that during Helene, I walked across the street to my widow neighbor, Miss Betty, her driveway is like 150 yards long,

and we walked over and we gave her one of our water filters, and we gave her some lanterns, and we gave her a radio. And I'm like, okay, Ms. Betty, here's the power. Turn the power on. Make sure the display says three and push this button with your thumb to call us. I handed it to Miss Betty. She turned it on.

She made sure it was three. Press the PTT. That's all you need. And see, see, I gave her a way to communicate. I went next door to her son's house, another 150 yards. And I said, bud, here's a radio. Your mom's on Channel 3. I'm on Channel 3.

If you need us, call us. She can call you. We've got a triangle of communications right here. If you need us, let us know. It worked great. And that's the sort of thing that FRS, that's where it really shines. There was no reason for me to take one of my go boxes over there with a 50 watt mobile and a portable battery and a roll-up antenna.

I'm talking Chinese to some of you folks. And I'm just saying that I didn't have to carry all this ham radio equipment over to my widow neighbor and try to explain to her how to tune the frequency and make sure the squelch was right? None of that. Power it on, press the button talk. Bang. That's why FRS is the bottom rung of your ladder. But you just got to know that going in there with the bottom run, you're going to have limits. So they're perfect for what they're created for. They are so good at what they do. And that's why for the last three shows, I've been saying you've got to buy them. Okay. All right. I got to, I want to put

this in here real quick, and I'm getting out of my notes, but I've got to put this in here real quick. If you are advanced in your preparedness communications, if you're a ham radio operator, if you're a former comms guy, if you've been in this a while, what I'm about ready to say, it really, I just want you to hear me because I'm saying it with sincerity. If you have advanced radios and an understanding of how to use them, program them and whatever, I would implore you to program the FRS frequencies into something that is monitoring or can be used to monitor like a scanner or even a throwaway handy talky, those frequencies. And the reason being, got to go all the way back to James Wesley Rawls and the survival blog and the Patriot book and all of that. James Wesley Rawls, if I remember correctly, dubbed the FRS radios as Bubba detectors.

And it's kind of funny. And so I just tried to convince a lot of people to buy these radios. And now they think I'm calling them Bubba's. Well, Bubba's really not the worst word if you live in the South. It may be if you don't like Southerners or something. But around here, it's kind of a term of endearment. I don't think that's what James was saying. But here's the deal.

There are people out there who, in a time of duress, will only have what they have. And if they've listened and if they've decided to buy these little $20 radios, in an emergency they pick the radio up and they need help and they may be trying to get help over these frequencies and you may be just close enough or have an antenna that has enough gain or height above ground level to be able to hear them calling for help and be able to communicate and that's important so um i'm not saying hey take your 50 watt you know betech mobile and start talking on frs it's not what i'm saying but i would encourage you to monitor to them monitor those frequencies especially we can talk about the channel three project down the road again

but the deal is i would encourage you if you can to keep that a part of your scanning package and you don't know who you'll be able to help down the road so with that said we got to know some things about the limits of fRS and we've kind of touched some things but i got to put it right back in here the range is very short so it's like a think of a bubble and inside that bubble you can talk. You cannot talk outside the bubble. And the bubble is the bubble is about as large as your neighborhood. The bubble is about as large as your local shopping center. The bubble is about as large as a small theme park. Okay. Think about that. Remember that. The bubble is about as large as your typical Appalachian United States forestry or whatever the whatever it's called

like a campground. I'm thinking Davidson River in Bavard, North Carolina. that's why I was getting confused. That's about it. Okay, in the woods, maybe half a mile, wide open on the planes of, I don't know, Wyoming. Y'all got planes in Wyoming? Not airplanes. They fly over, right? Yeah, so maybe one or two miles out there.

And it's not because the signal wouldn't go further, but the fact that it has a fixed antenna, a very low power output, what you see is what you get. There's no repeaters. You can't add external antennas. What you have in your hand is what you have to use. One of the caveats here is that suburban and urban areas, you're going to find these channels a lot more busily used. And the reason, going all the way back to the beginning, they're stupid cheap, buy them for nothing,

everybody's got them. If you don't go today and buy you some. You can order them on Amazon. I've got links everywhere, man. But, I mean, seriously, they sell them at Walmart and Target. Throw them in you bug you. And just, you know, skip the next two coffees at Starbucks or something. All right.

So, again, it's literally the bottom. of the latter. And within inside my family connect teaching, that's the new show sponsor here, which is the family connect system. It's a way to keep your family connected. When phones and whatnot quits working, there is a section there called the Cascade Protocol. Just think Cascade, right? So you start at the bottom of the list, well, it's your phone. And the next step up would be FRS. So literally this is the very first step in the process that I teach with the Cascade protocol. From there, you can go to GMRS, MERS, vice versa, ham radio, satellite phones, et cetera. But this is literally the first alternative to your cell phone. That's how,

so you've heard me say, you need a smoke detector, you need a weather radio, you need an AMFM radio, you need an FRS radio. Okay. So this is the bottom end of the transmitting spectrum for you and your family. These things are so easy to use. I mean, it's literally, you hand one to your kid. He's going to know what to do immediately. You're not going to have to explain this to him. And they're that simple. But because of their simplicity and low cost, they have very limited performance. But it's so much better than nothing. Right. So here's the deal with the Cascade protocol from the Family Connect system. We start with the FRS. And you can use that to up into its limit. And then you have to take the next step into the further, you know, you're trying to go further. You're trying to

talk farther. You're trying to reach other people. There's steps that you go. You don't just stop at the first rung of the ladder, right? So if you're interested in that, you can check out the Family Connect. The webinar replay is running right now. But think about this. So during Haleen, my neighbors and I used FRS. Now, if I wasn't a hand radio geeky, you know, radio dude, That would have been good for us right here. But if I needed to carry a conversation out to, I don't know, I live 30 minutes from town. Maybe I need to speak to someone up there. Well, I would need some way to get there.

I would have to cascade to the next level. And that could be like GMRS. We're going to that conversation next time. It's higher power. Repeaters are able to be used. You know, external antennas. All sorts of stuff opens up with that, the GMRS radio service. So here's the thing. FRS gets you across the street, talks to your neighbors, talks to your kids on their bicycles. So that's how and why you start there. Just a for instance. So we got our neighbors talking here. We could talk GMRS to my in-laws up the road. And if I needed to talk further, I could get on my ham radios. And if I needed to get even further, I'd get on my HF radios for ham. And if we had to get out even further, we'd dig up a satellite phone somewhere and make a call. So,

So this is the bottom rung of the ladder. I'm not trying to confuse you. Just saying, look, here's where you start. Okay. So a lot of times people buy these things, but they don't even know what to do with them. And I'm not saying moms don't know what to do. But, you know, moms are moms. I've got one.

You've got one. I married one. I didn't marry my mom. I married a girl who became a mom to my kids. But, you know, they're not usually the most technical end of the relationship. guys kind of do that and but that doesn't mean that that moms should be discounted in what they're able to do because I've seen some very smart moms teach me some things and I want to encourage you if you're a lady listening here your mom and you're wanting to help your kids get

started with this the FRS radios are a great place to start they're very simple they're cheap you kids tear them up you buy another set because they're cheap but the thing is you're giving them the opportunity to learn how to use and manipulate a two-way radio device. Now, a lot of times families will just buy radios. They're listening to this and they're going to go to Walmart this afternoon and buy something. But then they don't, they don't ever really take them out and use them. And if they do, it's just the kids playing around the house for about 30 minutes and then it gets boring. And then they leave them turned on. The batteries die. And nobody thinks about it. And so as we think about building plans

for preparedness, you know, the prep comms podcast, you have to think about what are we going to do. So we're buying this stuff, but what are we going to do? Well, you need to know what channel, so you have to develop a plan. You need to know if we have a check-in, so you have to develop a plan. You need to practice with them. And I know that sounds kind of silly, but you really need to because you need a plan. You need to practice the plan. So, you know, it's real easy to have stuff. It's harder to use stuff when you need an emergency or, you know, bad time or whatever if you've never practiced it. You can't let these things become a paperweight, but that doesn't mean that you got to throw your cell phones into garbage and just, you know, be radio geeky people. Because I'm a

radio geeky guy and I still have a cell phone. I think I've got six or seven we pay for every month. Now, I don't even know anymore. But here's the deal. You can have all this gear we've talked about and if you've never used it or if you've never tried to apply it or practice with it. It doesn't matter. Stuff doesn't save you a plan with clarity will. So there you go. This is September, by the way. Let me just throw this in. Yeah, this is the 9th of September, matter of fact. And it's the ninth day of the National Month of Preparedness in the United States. And this is a time that the government takes the opportunity to remind everybody, hey, stuff could happen so you need to prepare. And then they'll forget to talk about it for the next 11 months until, you know,

something happens. They blow something up again. And, uh, oh, well, we told you in September, you needed to get a case of water and an extra pack of toilet paper and some batteries for your flashlight. So use, let me just pause here. Use this as a reminder. Check your smoke detectors. Please. Please check your smoke detectors. We will, I do that when I change my clocks. Okay. Well, do it again. Just get you the stool and stand on the stool. Press the button. Make sure they work. that's the fireman in me talking um hurricanes are happening right now this is hurricane season uh wildfires are burning out west you know we've had floods everywhere it feels like this year

um anytime you look about about the west or up in the the heavy urban centers central midwest they're always talking about not enough electricity brownouts and and what power grid strains so think about that guys this is my little september National Preparedness Month reminder. And if you're listening to this in October or maybe April, yeah, let every month be a preparedness month. And that doesn't mean, again, you're out digging a bunker in your backyard or, you know, filling your basement full of whatever.

You can do that. And I don't discourage it. I'm just saying that's not really, that's not the heart of preparedness, okay? I mean, that is preparedness, but it's not the heart. The heart of it is a mindset. And it's like, oh, well, this could stop working. So maybe I should have an alternative. that's what we're teaching here on prepcom's podcast. And it's also why I built the Family Connect system.

It's not a checklist. It's not a pile of radios or just some boring podcast with me. It's a framework. It's a step-by-step deal that you and your family can go through to build a plan. Not everybody is like me. Not everybody loves communications and radios like you or some of you. And they need help. And that's what the Family Connect system does. It helps you and your your family, know who to call, know how to call, and when to call, and what to use to do those things. There is a webinar replay. I'll put the link in the show notes. But during this National Preparedness Month, this is a big reminder for that. So, again, FRS radios are the bottom rung of the ladder. I mean, they really are. But if you don't have a bottom rung on the ladder,

you have to take a very awkward, really weird first step to get on the ladder. So the bottom rung is required. And if you're coming down the ladder and you miss the bottom rung, you're going to realize just how important it was. So think about it like that. This is the first step. So moms, dads who are clueless, and that's not derogatory. That's just you just don't know.

Just hear me. FRS radios, if you have nothing else in your home, as an alternative means of communications, this is your answer. They're inexpensive. They make some really nice ones. We'll link those. They make some really cheap ones. We link those.

And they make some really good middle of the road. And we'll link those. But here's the thing. They are so much better than nothing. And I think that you'll find that you and your family will have some fun with them. I mean, most everybody vacations at some level. beach mountains whatever take them with you on the bicycles or whatever golf carts whatever you're doing you'll find that it's fun and i want to encourage you to spend the little bit of cash it takes

to get them in your family's box it doesn't make you weird it doesn't make you a doomer or whatever it's just giving you an alternative and if you want to learn more we're going to keep the conversation going but if you never go anywhere else you if you don't go any further This right here will give you two-way communications, and it could very well be a lifeline down the road. So I want to encourage you. I mean, I know that sounds kind of serious and whatever, but, and I've gone longer than I wanted to, by the way. But FRS radios are cheap. They're a good start.

It's like an own ramp. It's not the finish line, but you're getting on the highway of alternate communications. It's not about buying stuff. Now, I'm telling you to buy stuff, but it's really not about buying stuff. this will be the basis of what we're doing going forward but you have to start and once you get started we're going to start connecting the dots even further as we go along right so if you have any questions always comment uh send me a dm whatever also you get into wanting to know more we've got the family connect system uh and i'll link it in the show notes directly to the replay uh thank you guys

who've watched it and commented love it by the way but this is going to this is going to close the FRS miniseries, and we're going to step into GMRS in the next show. I really appreciate you guys sticking here with me. I'm having a lot of fun. I hope you guys are too. Again, we're building a library of communications gear so that when you have questions, you can come pull the book out, read it, put it back in, and go to the next step. So we're going to continue moving forward.

I'm loving it. I hope you guys are. Thank you so much for listening, for watching. Can you really watch? I guess you can. I mean, there's a picture on the, it's on YouTube. So I guess I have to say watching, sharing, subscribing, hitting the like, but all this. I just appreciate you being here and giving me your time sharing it with me here on the program.

And again, I'm here if you name me. Thank you so much for listening. I appreciate you guys. God bless you, 73, y'all. We'll see you next time. Thank you.