Prep Comms - Gmrs Series 7 Family Communication Routines Check Ins And What Silence Really Means

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

Most families don't lose communication because radios fail. They lose it because there's no routine, no shared rhythm, and no clear understanding of what silence actually means. In this episode, Caleb closes out the GMRS series by walking through how families should actually use radios day to day — how to structure simple check-ins, why calm routines matter more than gear, and how to respond when the radio goes quiet without panic. This episode focuses on habits and decision-making, not technology for technology's sake. What We Cover Why communication routines matter more than emergencies What a proper family radio check-in should sound like How often families should check in under normal and elevated conditions What silence really means on the radio — and what it doesn't When to wait, when to retry, and when to escalate Why calm leadership matters more than signal strength Planning Help If listening to this made you realize your family doesn't actually have a communication plan — not gear, but a real plan — Caleb offers a paid 90-Minute Family Communication Planning Session to help you decide what to rely on when phones fail. Book here: https://plan.prepcomms.com GMRS Resources Mentioned The First 10 Things to Do with a GMRS Radio (Mini-Book) https://prepcomms-shop.fourthwall.com/products/the-first-10-things-to-do-with-a-gmrs-radio-family-connect-mini-book-2 Pelicomms GMRS ¼-Wave Base Antenna Found Here in the Prep Comms Store WilComs Roll-Up Antenna (portable GMRS/MURS use) Available via the Prep Comms store Looking Ahead GMRS provides solid local communication for families when phones don't cooperate. For those ready to expand beyond local coverage, Ham Radio conversations begin in 2026. If you want a head start, Caleb offers a simple 30-day path to earn your amateur radio license before the end of January: https://www.familyconnectsystem.com/3030welcome No pressure. No rush. Caleb Nelson, K4CDN, WRBR237 Prep Comms Podcast  

Most families don't lose communication because their radios fail. They lose it because there's no routine. They have no rhythm and no shared understanding of what silence and quiet actually means. Today, we're going to talk about how families actually can use radios on the daily and how to build simple check-ins that don't feel like an emergency drill and what to do when things get really quiet. Hey, welcome back into the prepcoms podcast. I am your host, Caleb Nelson, K4 CDN, WRBR 237. And if you're listening to this video, if you're listening to this podcast, whatever we want to call it, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

And if you're in July or maybe it's September of 27, whatever, you have to know that today is the 16th of December, 2025. And this will be the final episode of this year. for this show. I'm going to take the rest of the month off to collecting my thoughts and get things going and making sure we're going the right way. But it's been a heck of a year. And I appreciate you being here. All right. So this is the eighth episode in the GMRS radio services. And this episode is going to kind of close the loop on some things I promise, especially in the beginning and then just last time here on the show. Now we've talked about what GMRN.

really is. And we've talked about what it can really do and how the family can stay connected, how they can use the radios, how they can talk and how they can't talk and what buttons to we've gone through every bit of that. And if you've missed it, I encourage you to go back and check it out because utilizing what we've taught over these last seven episodes can teach you and your family how to stay calm and make clear and concise communications. So today we're going to finish up by talking about some routines, some check-ins, and what happens, if and when, it gets really quiet. All right? Because, you know, if you know what to do in those situations, didn't want to come out, you're going to know how to communicate on the good days and the bad days.

Now, most families, and I have found this here with the Family Connect system and the different things that we've done and are doing, with the training and scaling here on the prepcoms is that most families think that communications plans and walkie talkies and PDFs and whatnot, they're just for emergencies. You know, it's only when the world ends do we think about an alternative means of communication. You know, like the people who live through Hurricane Helene in Appalachia last year, they were thinking about communicating, although they probably had never really thought about it until everything was gone. Or maybe, you know, the Bell Air Fire in California,

I'm sure those people probably never considered, you know, hey, we're going to not be here, not going to have anything to come home to. How would we communicate with our family if we're separated? I'm not trying to be a dumer. I'm just saying these are the things that people go through, but they go through it without a plan because they don't think a plan is important.

And I get it, that on normal days, you know, 99 out of 100, they're great. They're fine. You get up, you go to work, you have the commute, you listen to a podcast, thank you. You drive home, you guys eat supper together, the kids get on their tablets, you get on the YouTube, and everybody goes to bed. And a lot of times, a lot of families, if they even have a backup means of communication, they'll only turn the radio on, they'll only turn the weather radio on. They'll only listen to their AMFM radio when something is wrong. And then, you know, the funny thing about that is you would think that like bringing in something to assist with the situation you find out that because maybe you're not familiar or your wife's not familiar or your kids don't know what to do, those things actually become stress amplifiers. So instead of helping, they make it worse. That's why you have to have routines because a routine will remove uncertainty. Trust me, dad with five kids, small business owner, lives 30 minutes away from every

you need some routines. And I don't care if you live in a neighborhood that shares the parking lot with the publics, you still need some routines, I promise. All right. What routines do for you and your family is they turn the, oh my gosh, what do I do into, oh yeah, this is what we always do. That'll keep your family steady, all right? So check-ins.

And I'm not talking ham radio nets or some of you guys are GMRS users and y'all have groups that check in over the repeaters or what. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about you and your family, knowing how to power the radio's on and communicate even in the house, maybe even from the house to the garage, okay? And it's not a conversation.

I'm not talking about, hey, Billy, what you've been doing today. No, I'm talking about, hey, Billy, do you hear me on the radio? Yeah, Mom, I hear you. That's a terrible kid voice. I've been watching a lot of the Christmas shows, so sorry. I could have done the Charlie Brown voice, but I won't.

So I don't have a trombone. All right, so here's the deal. We're not trying to have a conversation with a check-in. We're just checking in. Hey, mom, can you hear me? Sure, go ahead. I'm out here in the garage. Can you send Billy out to help me?

The lawnmower batteries dead again. Got it. I'll send Billy right now. Thanks very much. Over. That is a check-in. Or how about, hey, Susie, can you go and get the weather radio from the garage.

Yeah, mom, I got it. I'll get it straight away. I'll be in in just a minute. Over. So you're using the radio to compress the space between two people. She's out in the garage.

You call her on the walkie-talkie. It takes the space from the master bedroom upstairs to the garage and compresses it to your right there with her. And I know you're like, oh my gosh, listen. No, There are people who don't think this way. And it's not wrong if you don't think this way.

But I want to speak to the others that do and say, just because someone doesn't have it figured out to the level that you do, doesn't mean they don't deserve the time here as well. Stick with me. It gets better. All right. Speaking of plans. Speaking of routines.

If you're listening to this and you're realizing my family doesn't have a communication, plan, not gear, not stuff you've bought, not stuff you have on hand, but a real plan. I'm now offering a 90-minute family communications planning session. You can find it at plan. Dot prepcoms.com. It'll be in the show notes. It'll be in the description. If you need a plan, I have a 90-minute family communications planning session at plan.

plopcoms.com. Now, back to check-ins real quick. How often do you do check-ins? Well, I'm going to tell you, it just depends. on the situation. Like if it's a normal day, maybe just one time. You know, maybe, maybe you do it once a Saturday or maybe it's every third Saturday. But if it's a normal day, unless your kids just like to use the walkie-talkies, which you will find some of them do, don't discourage that. But normally, you know, just once will be fine. You know, you make sure your batteries are okay and

whatever. Now, if there's an elevated concern, like we're having severe thunderstorms coming in, you may want to check once, maybe twice, the day before the storms get there. You got freezing weather coming or an expected blizzard. You may want to make sure. You know, you might want to make sure that all the batteries are topped off and not just make sure that it will power on. Okay, because something could have gotten bumped. A setting could have changed to make sure one radio can talk to the other. All right.

Now, if you're living in an active disruption, I don't know, maybe in Minnesota back in, in 2020. You want to make sure that everyone has their radios with them, that you have a time to check in to make sure everything's working, that you're safe, not just focusing on radio, but make sure your doors are locked, whatever,

and keep up with what's going on. Now, that doesn't mean, Mom, I'm in the bathroom. Okay, Johnny, let me know when you're finished. I mean,

that's not required. Okay, but you've got to think about what happens if? So if the towers get saturated or God forbid one of them goes down in an emergency, then you're dealing with something you may not have ever dealt with before. So if you build these things into your psyche, if you will write this out, if you'll develop a plan, I can help you develop one,

whatever that is, and share it with your family, make it a part of your family rhythm, you're going to stay connected. Look, here's the thing. What matters most is that everybody knows who speaks up first, who initiates the call, and then what does silence mean? Like, what does silence mean? It could mean dead batteries. It could mean that there's like something between you and the other user that you're trying to reach that the signal just can't get through. Maybe the baby daughter is sitting there just waiting for her turn and she's waiting for permission and doesn't necessarily really 100 get it.

but she knows that she should have a radio on and she's just kind of just, you know, don't want to make daddy mad. Don't speak out of the way and make dad mad. You know, maybe there's somebody listening and they're just like, again, I don't know if I could, if I should say anything. Is it the right time? Did did dad call me yet? Did mom expect me to answer that question? Look, here's the thing. You've got to understand that this stuff is not second nature to basically anybody. And that's what we're trying to do is to make it more natural in case of an emergency. Because the thing that happens in an emergency is the panic is what will create all the chaos. I mean, you can have all the tools.

But if you don't know how to use them, it's going to create chaos. And if you do have the tools and you don't know how to use them, well, then you're going to panic about that. Just like we said a few minutes ago, it's going to cause more stress. I got these walkie talkies and they're supposed to be working and I can't hear my, you know. It's because you didn't practice with them. You've never even touched them. They're still in the blowpack from Walmart. Come on, man.

And what happens is you start to make bad decisions when you panic. I mean, we've all done it. Not just in communications. But, you know, when we get afraid, and I've talked about this a lot, early on the show in regards to mindset, you can't do any of this out of fear. That's why I have spent so much time trying to help you create ways and means to not make bad decisions. because a bad decision will amplify the silence. All right.

So what happens if you do run into some silence and you don't know what to do next? All right. So, again, you have a plan. You develop this plan. And let's say that you miss a check-in or someone misses a check-in. You call them back. Hey, Billy, I know you're over at the neighbor's house. Can you hear me?

I'm trying to call you this is dad. He didn't get anything from him. So you wait, say 10 minutes. You call them again. Again, Billy, it's dad. Can you hear me on the radio? Nothing. Well, then maybe you should try to go upstairs or maybe you should actually go outside.

Billy, can you hear me? It's dad. Answer the radio, dude. You may not call your kids dude, but mine are 20 plus years old. So they get called dude sometimes. All right. If they don't check in on the third call. All right, so you've got it established.

This is what we're doing. We anticipate this is what we're doing. you don't get a call on the third time. That's when you don't stress, you don't freak out, you don't start rushing around like a chicken without a head, you don't start guessing, you then escalate deliberately. You figure out what's the best way for me to make the move to find Billy and figure out why Billy's not answering the radio. Now, let me tell you this, if Billy's just being a kid, and so we've all been a kid, like everybody listening to this program has been a kid and not done what our parents told us to do, And then it freaks our parents out. And while they're panicking looking for us, because they love us.

When they find us, they want to kill us because they were so worried about us. Y'all been there? I've been there. I've been there as a kid and a dad. And honestly, man, the day Carl and I got engaged. So that is just two days from the time this show releases on my birthday. December 18th of 1995. No, I'm sorry.

That's the first birthday we were done. We got engaged in 1998. So it's December 18th, 1998. Now, back then, we had cell phones and we had pagers. And the cell phones were kind of hit and miss. You know, sometimes I paid the bill. Sometimes I didn't. She had a phone.

And I also gave her a pager because I had a pager because pagers were cool. Hers was purple. So we had seen each other that morning. This was my birthday morning. It's December the 18th of 1990. gosh. We'd seen each other for just a few minutes. She was like a birthday morning kind of a thing. And then she was going to go home and we're going to go. She was going to get ready. I'm going to get ready. And then we're going to go to this really nice, my favorite, our favorite is just, you know, it's our place, right?

We're going to the steakhouse in town, the peddler in Spartanburg. It's like the nicest thing we have and it's fantastic. Still is. So she leaves my house. And she's got about a 30. minute drive from where I live to where she lived. And it was, it's like clockwork. It takes 30 minutes to get that. I mean, we live rural, you guys. So Carla leaves the house. In about 30 minutes later, I start calling her phone. In her house, her home phone number, no answer, no answer, no answer. So then I call her cell phone, no answer, no answer. And I'm concerned about her because she should have been there. And there was something I needed to tell her and she had no idea I had a diamond in my pocket that was burning a hole in my bridge's leg. So then I started paging her. She didn't answer.

She never answered, never answered, never responded. Now I'm panicked. Now I'm actually calling her parents in saying, hey, have you seen her? No, we haven't seen her. Well, I'm concerned about her because it's been like 45 minutes now. She should have already been home. I'm going to ride that direction just to see if I can find her. I mean, because it was a long stretch of road, a lot of deer. There's a lot of things you start thinking about when you really get serious about being in love and, you know, whether it's your wife or your children, you've been there. So I head down the road and finally she calls me back on my cell phone from like the 10th page, you know. And I'm like, where are you? Oh, I'm just, I'm just leaving pay less shoes.

Now at that point, I was ready to scream on both sides. You know, I can't say it out loud, but you know what I'm thinking. Turns out she left my house, and instead of going home, she went to look at shoes. And I'm trying to get her home to get ready to go out for our date so I can propose to her and ask her to be my wife, who would now be married almost 26 years. Yeah. Why am I saying that? It's because sometimes the silence can make you crazy, right?

She was, what, 18 years old? she wasn't, was she 18 or 20, she was 21 at this point? She was 21 years old. And she really wasn't thinking, oh, I need to keep my pager on me in case Cal calls me. She wasn't, I was. I was in the fire service.

I'd already seen all the bad stuff, you know, when you start seeing this stuff every day, man, it just follows you around. So I went out there on a limb, but here's the thing. I tried this. I tried that. I tried this. I tried that.

And then finally, I moved. And about a third of the way to her house, 10 minutes into the drive, she calls me back. Oh, I just went to look at some shoes. Yeah. I'm like, well, I'm glad you're okay. I'll see you in a little bit. And hung up on her. You guys are laughing because you've done it too.

So I'm going to stop there. But that's a true story from 1998. God bless her. Gosh, she's the best. She'll never hear this, but y'all, she is the best. Okay, so going back to why we're actually here, GMRS radio is one of the, if not the best answers to your family's communication solutions if that's where you want to stop. Because it does what it's supposed to do. It gives your family a local.

Now, hear me. This isn't one of those walkie-talkies you see on Facebook and there's, you know, talk across the kind of. with unlimited use, no payments ever, and all this garbage. That's a, that's bull, okay? That those don't work like they say they're going to work if you take the SIM card out of it. Okay, it won't work anymore like it says it will because it's basically a Next Tail Radio, which is a push-to-talk cell phone. All right, but GMRS can give your family local, reliable communications when the phones are

working good and when the phones aren't working good. And if you pair it with a good plan, if you develop good habits in your family, you're not going to panic. Okay. You're not going to lose it. It's not going to crash. Things are going to continue to work. And if you will build some routines and some practice check-ins, if you will think through the potential of the silence that you might run into, GMRS will serve your family very, very well. Now, that doesn't mean it's going to answer every single problem, but it's going to be.

it will help you if you run into some hiccups. All right. Again, if you need some help mapping this stuff out from your family, instead of just guessing or trying to figure it out through these episodes or maybe just watching a ton of videos or whatever on YouTube, let me know. You can contact me at plan. coms.com and we'll book you a planning session together. All right, I'm going to go for now.

Again, this is it for this year. God bless you guys. I hope you have a fantastic Christmas holiday with your family. I hope your new year brings you the things you've wished and desired. I hope that you enjoy happiness, peace, and health throughout the end of this into the next year. Guys, I'm Caleb. This has been the prepcoms podcast. My call sign is K4 CDN and WRBR 237.

I will see you in the new year. And until then, God bless, 73. Hey, what are you still doing here? Now, before you go, I got one final thought, okay? GMRS is going to do what it's supposed to do. It's family radio, okay? And it'll give you and your family a way to connect. It's dependable, and you can stay connected even like I said a moment ago when the phones don't cooperate.

And it could help you make some new friends. It may not. It just depends on your location and the use of it by other people, but there stands a chance. But if you want more, if you're wanting to learn more about communications and grow that out for yourself, as we walk into 2026, we're moving into the amateur radio hobby or ham radio, as it's known. And it's not necessarily always just a hobby. And it's not just some flex, like I've got a license.

but it can actually be a really serious communications tool for your families who want broader reach and more resilience. And that means a lot of different things. Like you may have a daughter that lives in North Carolina and you find yourself in central Ohio. You guys can actually communicate with each other through the amateur radio hobby. Yeah, if the phone stop working on both ends or one, it works. It helps you. There's a whole net of things to use that can actually. expand your family's usability in regards to amateur radio.

It doesn't mean everybody in your house needs a license, but it might be that someone there can actually get involved. Now, if you check the show notes or the description below, you will find a link to the 30-30 plan that I have. This is a 30-day free path that helps you get licensed studying 30 minutes a day for 30 days or less, and you can be licensed as an amateur radio operator. Before the end of January, sign up for free.

I'm not, you can get in and out anytime you want. I'm not trying to sell you anything. I'm just trying to help you take the next step. All right. It's there if you're interested. And if you want to just stay right here with GMRS, it's fine. It's great. Check out the show notes.

There's a link to the first 10 things to do with a GMRS radio. It's like a micro ebook I've written. It's got all that you need to do more than just talk across the neighborhood. I've got antennas in stock, including the roll-up antenna and the simple GMRS base station antenna. they'll help your signal more than you can imagine and those are also linked in the show notes. Guys again, God bless you. Happy New Year and I look forward to seeing you on the other side.

God bless.