Prep Comms - GMRS — The Family Band That Actually Works

Episode Date: October 16, 2025

What you’ll learn (fast): Why GMRS is the practical “bigger brother” to FRS: same 22 channels, different rules, more capability. The license is simple: $35, 10 years, one license covers your whole household (apply at FCC.gov). Range reality: terrain + antennas matter. Main channels allow up to 50W transmitter output; interstitials are lower. Privacy tones ≠ privacy. GMRS is open-air. You must ID every 15 minutes and at the end. Why certified radios matter (and why new FRS/GMRS combo handhelds aren’t sold anymore). Links & resources: Free: GMRS License Express Guide  Read: How to Get Your GMRS License Vetted Gear: Amazon GMRS List → https://www.amazon.com/shop/hamradio360/list/3NJ7FK9BFG6V9 www.PrepComms.com

It is the prepcoms podcast. Welcome in. I'm Caleb K4 CDN, third cup of coffee. It's hot. Whoa. And my GMRS call sign is WRBR 27. Thank you for coming by. I was not prepared for that sip of coffee as I pressed record, and I am not changing it because what you see is what you get.

You guys appreciate you being here, honestly, and I'll lay off the coffee until we finish the program here. We are going to start talking about GMRS, the General Mobile Radio Service here on the Prepcoms podcast. We've talked how to listen to stuff. We've talked CB Radio, M-U-R-S radio. We've talked FRS Radio most recently. and now we're going to talk about the big brother to FRS Radio and the first cousin to CB Radio. Yeah, that's a great way to say it. So, FRS radios, a little bubble pack radios, you buy cheap at Walmart, you put about $14 with the batteries in them.

And as long as your kids, don't forget to turn them off, they're fine. They work in the neighborhood. They work around the house. They work in the backyard. Your kids have a lot of fun until the batteries die. And then you put them in a drawer and you forget about them. They are a great first step in the communications for preppers, for families who won't stay connected when stuff happens. If you want a little more, actually a lot more capabilities, then you need to step up to their big brother, the GMRS General Mobile Radio Service.

Now, the crazy thing is they actually use the same frequencies as FRS radios, but the FCC has given this user more power. and you know with more power comes more responsibility yep who was that peter's uncle that said that can't remember his name because i'm not a huge spider-man fan but i tell my kids that all the time gmrs is a licensed two-way radio service for individuals and families and whoa did you just say licensed i did what does that mean it means you're going into a government database to utilize these radio frequencies legally oh my gosh i don't want to be a ham you're not this is not ham radio, but you will have to have a license that we'll talk about here in just a moment. You see, the FCC in the United States controls the radio spectrum. And a lot of people

don't like that. And I can't say I'm the biggest fan, but at the same time, I appreciate some semblance of control or making sure it's not a free-for-all. Because, I mean, could you imagine if we had complete access to the entire radio spectrum and I was just broadcasting down here in the 800 megahertz band and you know the local sheriff's department's trying to use that as well and because I'm just down here blasting skillet you know on whomever's listening on 800 megahertz and my neighbor's being robbed and held at gunpoint but the sheriff's officers can't talk to each other because you know they don't know that it's the best kept secret in our generation is one of the best songs ever by skillet. So I am honestly quite thankful that we have some level of accountability when it

comes to the spectrum. I know a lot of people, maybe even listen to this program, don't. It's okay. We don't have to agree on everything. But way back in the day, like before me, well, right about the time I showed up, the FCC created a class of radio called Class A, Class Alpha CB, Class A Citizens Band. They've changed it up as time has progressed. and now this Class A, C, B, it lives under Part 95 sub-party. And if you're really bored or if you can't go to sleep at night, look it up, I'll put it in the show notes, Part 95 sub-party. It'll make sense of everything I'm going to try to convey to you today.

FRS and GMRS radios, the FRS we talked about the last time through. We had a little mini-series there. We're going into this GMRS series, and they share the same 22 channels, but GMRS allows you more power. You can swap your antennas. You can even use repeaters, and you get 50 watts. I said more power, but I mean, you get 50 watts compared to what, two or less? So we talked about the FRS, kind of giving you a bubble of communications.

You can talk around the backyard. You can talk maybe around your little neighborhood. If you guys go to a small amusement part, you and your kids can chat at that point. GMRS is not the little bubble anymore. Now we're talking countywide communications. If the infrastructure is there, which we're going to talk about, as this series goes through. But you go from just backyard talk to neighborhood talk to from your house to the grocery

store, from your house, to the fire department, from your house to across the county, to me Ma's house, whomever you're trying to talk to. And of course, we have to get back to licensing and regulation and responsibility for the end user, and that leads us to the FCC again. Now, they did open these frequencies up back in the day. and they're like, we're going to allow people to use them and we're going to charge them. They're not going to have to take a test, but they are going to have to go in our database and they're going to give us money.

So when I got my WRBR-237, the GMRS fee was $70 for 10 years. Yeah, now it's 35 for 10 years. That's not a bad deal. When does the government ever cut their prices in half? Not very often. unless they're sending you checks, they'll send you. Anyway, I'm not going there. So getting the license is really easy, but you got to hear me.

There's so many people, especially in preparedness, that don't want to get their amateur radio license. And I know that this isn't really the reason, but this is the excuse a lot of people use. I don't want to be in a government database. Okay, get you. I get it. I don't have to take a test. Okay, that's fine. But if you're going to get your GMRS license, you're going into a government.

database. Actually, you're going into the same government database that I'm in as an amateur radio operator, the same one that I'm in as a business itinerate radio operator, and the same one I'm in as a fellow GMRS radio operator. Yeah, you are. It's the same database. People can look you up if they want to look you up and whatever address you use, they see your address. You can see my post office box, 370, Pauline, South Carolina, 29374. A lot of people get hung up on this. At least they have in the past, and it kind of seems they still do. But you've got to understand something, guys. Not very many people are going to go to the FCC.gov and try to find where people live, because you can just type your name and address into a Google search bar, and you're going to

find sites like whitepages.com, and they're going to have your name, your spouse's name, your previous address, where you work, your telephone number, your email address. They're going to have all that in there anyway. So don't be fearful of the, of the, of the, of the, of the GMRS license. Don't be fearful of the business it. Don't be fearful of GMRs, the ham. Guys, you're on the internet. You have smartphones. They know everything you're doing. They, whomever you want to call they, they do. Okay. You're in the database. If you're listening to this show, you're in a database. You're watching it on YouTube. You're in a database. If you're reading survival blog or if you're, you know, subscribe to a Ford Observer or if you're following grid base on Instagram, you're in a database. okay okay okay everybody calm down it's not a big deal it's 2025 it's where we are skylink is active

um 35 bucks we'll get you this license and get you legal on gmrs now a lot of people are like i don't care i'm still not going to get a license i'm not going to use it and you're going to get these radios and you're going to try to get on one of the local repeaters and without a call sign they're going to really frown on you they're going to frown on you because they've done the work, they're supplying the infrastructure for you and your family to talk on, all they're asking is for you to be licensed legally and to use it with respect. So it's definitely something to think about. We're going to talk repeaters in another show, but I just want to get that out there in this licensing and responsibility segment here. It's a $35 fee. Your license

last 10 years. Again, that's half what I paid. And it covers your entire household. Now, this is this is so cool because it's a little gray but really it's not that gray part 95 sub party when you read it I mean it's talking spouses kids parents in-laws uncles well if it covers your uncle does it cover your nephew does it if it covers your uncle does it cover your cousin I mean it kind of sounds that way so you could you yourself could get this license and your whole family could operate under the license right that you bought for 35 bucks for 10 years now you have to and they have to and everyone who uses it have to follow the the rules because you the guy who signed up

and put your name and address on the FCC application and was approved for 35 dollars you're responsible for proper operations at all time so you can tell your your nephew freddie hey man I got these radios they work great around town and freddie's like oh man yeah I'm your nephew I can use them. He's like, yeah, bro, I mean, hey, use the radios. And Freddy's like a crack dealer. And Freddy's out using GMRS radios to coordinate his crack deals. And he gets busted.

Well, I mean, this probably wouldn't happen. But if it did, the possibility stands, you get in trouble because you, the license holder, are responsible for proper operations at all time. So, you know, you may not want to give Freddie a radio. You might not even want to have your kids around Freddie until he finds righteousness. But yeah, anyway, if you have a license, you are responsible for anyone who's utilizing it under your call sign for their proper operations at all time. Now, your family members can operate and anybody who stumbles by your station in an emergency can use it as well. Okay, so, you know,

that's the, that's the, we hear a lot of that and I don't want to go down the road too deep here, but in an emergency, I'll use anything I want to call anybody I won't. You can. You can in a life or limb situation. If it's a real emergency, man, if you have to call DJT and tell him to bring Marine one to pick you up, you do it. I mean, it's an emergency, right? Life or limb is a real emergency. You're out walking down the side of the road in the desert of Arizona, and some guy comes by on a horse and accidentally knocks you over and knocks you out, and he's no kin to you. You don't know who he is. He's total stranger, but he sees you have a walkie-talkie. He can pick it up and call for help because he realizes this an emergency, there's no cell service, and he can use it

although he's not under your license. That was a terrible analogy. All right. So back during Hurricane Helene, we were out power for a whole week here at the farm except the generator. We were hand pumping water. Cell phone service sucked, although it worked, it still really sucked. There's no data to be used at all. And if the generator wasn't running, we had no Starlink at that time because they didn't have the batteries in place. Anyway, we had GMRS radios, we had MERS radios, we used GMRS where they're neighbors across the street, both ladies, and it worked great. It worked great.

It was simple. We didn't use repeaters because we really can't get those from here. We're too far away. But point to point, the bubble gets bigger, the better radios, the better antennas. All right. GMRS is a great tool. And we're going to keep talking about it here in just a second. I want to tell you how to get your license for GMRS.

Now, when you're listening to this program, we may still be, at the time of the recording, we are in a government shutdown right now. And so the FCC, they're all on vacation, not getting paid. And they're not processing applications at this time. They're not processing business itinerant. They're not processing ham radio license. None of that stuff. Nothing's happening in the FCC offices right now.

I would imagine that the smoke detectors are still beeping and no one still changed the batteries. It's kind of like that. but you can still apply and when the system comes back online, you're in the queue. All right. So family connectsystem.com is a website that I have and it is a framework. It's a system that you can use to build a entire family communication system to keep you and your peeps connected when phones stop working. And one of the parts of that is a free guide I've written with the help of AI to

to utilize a lie, utilize a I to help you get your GMRS license. The FCC website, let's just be frank, in 2025, it sucks, totally. It looks like it was built in the 90s, and it probably was. It's not a lot of fun to get through, especially if you've never been there, but I've got a free guide that you can get at family connect system.com forward slash GMRS. So family connect system.com forward slash GMRS. And this will actually walk you through step by step. Go here. Click that. Enter this. Press that button for you to get your GMRS license. So you can go ahead and apply even now. Or if you're listening to this later down the road,

if you're interested in your GMRS license is free. You just follow the prompts, literally. And it will get you there and get you licensed. Check it out. Family Connect System. dot com forward slash gmrs the link will be in the show notes too by the way oh man you hear me say and it's kind of a misnomer and it really really lends more towards the the actual usage and what i hear on gmrs but i'll say from time to time that gmrs is the new cb radio sometimes i'll say it's cb radio with batteries well that's because back in the day i had a portable cb a handheld CB. My brother had one, but they weren't as popular as the ones that we had in our cars, because back then everybody drove all the time, and, you know, we liked our freedom in America to just

get on the highway. Now we just sit at home and look at Instagram. Anyway, GMRS is not CB radio, although it was initially CB radio, what you and I think about when we think CB radio, you know, smoking the band at Duke's a Hazard, B.J. and the Bear, stuff like that. we're thinking truckers and chatting on the highway and whatnot, those radios talk on the 27 megahertz band. The GMRS, FRS, runs in the 462-467 megahertz band. The signals a lot cleaner with GMRS. It won't go as far, but it will sound like it'll go further. We'll talk about it as we go, right? Another myth that you'll find in regards to these radios, especially when they were first introduced, and it's not as prevalent as it was,

but you're still going to see it, and it's called marketing. Marketing. Marketing does not equal physics, okay? Some of these things say 36-mile radios, some say 50-mile maximum range. And yeah, if you're out in the high plains and you're standing on a Butte somewhere and you've got a buddy on a Butte over there, you know, 30, 40 miles away, it's nothing in between you except oxygen, more than likely you can talk to each other. But, But if you're in southwest Missouri and you're living life like the average American and there's houses and there's trees and there's buildings and there's rise, you know, there's valleys, stuff in the way between you and your buddy, you're not going to get 50 miles.

You can't overcome physics. So the great thing to kind of counter that with GMRS is that you are allowed up to 50 watts on some of the frequencies. You are allowed to use repeaters on some of the frequencies. So just bear that in mind. FRS was like what max 2 watts. You couldn't change the antenna. You couldn't add an external antenna.

You couldn't have an elevated antenna. GMRS allows you up to 50 watts. You can do external antennas. You can do our whips that we sell in the store. You can do the roll-up J-Pole type antennas. You can do a base station antenna on a tower. And you can do a repeater. I mean, it's so much more capable.

And for 35 bucks for 10 years, it's probably the best deal going in regards to not having to take a test. All right. Another thing to think about is you see on the boxes, you know, 47 privacy tones and all this than that. And what those privacy tones actually do. Let me just try to make it as simple as I can here because I know we have a broad audience. You program your radio. You choose a setting in. the little radio you bought from Target.

And both radios, you get out of the box, you program them the same way. So you choose Privacy Tome 13. And you guys can talk back and forth to the two radios, you know, back and forth. And you don't hear anyone else, man. You're just like, this is so great. I don't hear anybody. This is private communications. I'm going to tell my wife how hot.

No, you don't understand. Just because you can't hear anyone else doesn't mean everyone else can't hear you. The privacy tone only, in essence, blocks what your radio is receiving. It's only allowing signals transmitted to it that have the same privacy tone enabled on their transmit. So you have a receive tone enacted, and they have a transmit tone enacted, and vice versa. And when they transmit it, it's a subaudible tone that tells your radio, hey, it's time to listen, and your radio can hear what's transmitted. And so can everyone else?

because there's no privacy on a public radio, and that's what GMRS, it's wide open public, everybody can hear everything you're saying, okay? Just because you can't hear them doesn't mean they can't hear you, all right? You can't encrypt, you can't encrypt. You cannot use encryption on GMRS. You can't play music, okay? You can't run commercials. You can't run commercials for politics.

I mean, it's just it's public. radio that anyone can hear. Okay? Got to know that. You have to identify your call sign. So when you get your license through the FCC, once they go back to work, you will be issued a license. Mine again is WRBR237. So if you're using your radios and having a conversation, you have to use your call sign, WRBR 237, every 15 minutes, and when you hang up or at the end of the conversation, okay? So I would come on and say, this is WRBR 237, anyone listening? And Andy may come on and say, hey, this is WRBR 454.

What's happening? And I'm like, hey, dude, how's it going? It's great. We're talking along. 15 minutes shows up. Hey, this is WRBR 237. Oh, reminder. This is WRBR 454.

We covered it. We're legal. All right, dude, this is great chatting with you. you know, we're 20 minutes in the convoy, and I'm like, we're saying goodbye. And it's like, we'll talk to you later, man, WRBR, 237. And you let go, and that's the end of the conversation. He identifies at the end of his last transmission and everybody's legal. You have to identify your call sign every 15 minutes.

So back in the day, CB radio, the trucker radios, they had a license, they had to follow. And then the FCC's like, nobody's doing this. This is just extra paperwork for us. So they scrapped that and people started using what they call a handle, a CB radio handle, like smoky, you know. Anyway, there's some great handles out there. We don't have to go in that. We've already talked CB. But now with GMRS, you don't really have a handle.

You have your call signs. So some people may be like 237 instead of the WRBR, but you need to at least lead and close with that. Okay. it's not really gray the rules are pretty specific i'm just telling you what i've heard locally um i don't talk a lot on gmrs because it is limited in my area except you know like on my farm but to other people um and it's just not it's a great service for people who aren't hand radios operators um you have to use plain language now you can say 104 or i'm 1060 of the area or 109 can you repeat or man my new radio is 108 is in service you can use those but

you can't you can't misconstrue what you're saying you can't encrypt you can't hide stuff legally on GMRS okay I got to have to have to say it encourage you to use only FCC certified equipment back in the day when the GMRS and FRS came out they would make a radio that was frs and gmrs and since 2019 they're like no we're done with that we're not going to let you make those anymore because what was happening is people were using the gmRS output power on the frs frequencies which you know just broke the law so they are the rules and they've just decided if you want frs you can get those ultra low power radios for you in your backyard if you want to pay the 35 bucks and go legal with higher power bigger antennas and whatever

okay um you can find these on amazon i've got them in my store the b tech makes a really good one it's based on the uv 82 chassis which is one of my favorite handheld radios works really good uh and it is just a bare bones gmrs radios rugged a little rugged it's not waterproof for anything although you can find those we've got them in the store in the show note links i'm sure but um you know a lot of people don't need that a lot of people don't plan on, you know, traipsing through the woods and lying down in the mud and being out in the rain. They're just looking for something good for their kids. So there's, again, like FRS or something for everyone, GMRS, there's something for everyone. It's not called family

radio, but man, it sure works great for families. It's not called Prepper Radio, but it really works great for Preppers. And I've found a lot of Preppers are family folks. And they're just, they're doing what they're doing on behalf of their family. GMRS is very simple. It's easy to be legal. And I'm telling you, uh, the wattage output with the external antennas, the ability to elevate antennas to have a 50 watt mobile radio in your car with a good antenna. Wow, man. I'll tell you, it, it changes everything. So, uh, again, I've got a link in the show notes to how to get your GMRS license and we're going to talk about that maybe a little bit more next week um and talk about how it actually covers your whole family but you can get the

the guide there it's free just just jump over their website signing and it'll send you the the prompts but it's a family connect system.com forward slash GMRS I might have gone a little longer than normal this time but I appreciate you being here it's nice to be back this is not a one-shot deal we're going to spend some time here really getting into the weeds and regards to GMRS because it is really the best thing going for families and preppers who don't want to take a test okay set it out loud thank you for listening I'm Caleb Nelson K4 CDN WRBR 237 and other calls that I can't remember because I don't have to use them as often but you can find us at prepcoms.com

We're on YouTube like and all that stuff if you will or your favorite pod player And don't forget, we've got all the stuff there in the blog and on the show notes. So thank you for stopping by. Again, I'm Caleb. I appreciate your time. I wish you well, and I look forward to catching up with you next time. Set me through, y'all. God bless.