Prep Comms - GMRS: What can it Really Do?

Episode Date: October 24, 2025

In this episode, Caleb Nelson (K4CDN | WRBR237) breaks down what GMRS can really do—and what it can’t. You’ll learn how far GMRS actually reaches, why antenna height beats transmitter power every time, and what equipment upgrades make the biggest difference for families building real communication plans. We’ll also cover license coverage, the truth about 50 watts, repeater basics, and why investing in a better antenna might triple your range overnight. Links & Resources: Free GMRS License Express Guide →  Live Family Connect Webinar → Thursdays 7 PM ET | Replay Fri–Mon →  More episodes → @PrepComms Recommended Gear: BTECH GMRS-50PRO →  Retevis RA86 →  ZBM2 QP Whip (use code PREPCOMMS) →  Wil-Coms Roll-Up J-Pole →  Centerfire Ground-Plane →  Find Repeaters → https://mygmrs.com

Welcome into the prepcoms podcast. I'm your host Caleb Nelson, K4 CDN, WRBR27, in the squeaky chair today, and we're going into the GMRS series episode number two. So we've recently finished up a little small series about the FRRR. radio before that M-U-R-S radio. If you've missed those, go check them out. Matter of fact, go back to the beginning and come all the way through with us. A lot of great information, what to listen to, how to listen to, why you should be listening in case of an emergency or any prepper dystopia nightmare you may have. And we're here to help you figure out your

communications for those scenarios you may be prepping for, even if you're not preparing for anything, we can still help you learn through how to talk to folks when maybe the phones go down. Maybe the AWS goes down again, and this time it affects a sailor carrier. Wow. Yeah, what would you do? That's what we're talking about here. So this is episode number two of the GMRS series. Again, I'm Caleb. Thank you for being here with us. And genuinely appreciate all the conversation that we have in regards to these episodes. Yeah, if you've missed the first episode, we just began talking about GMRS Radio, the general mobile radio service, and it's free for people to use in the U.S. as long as you pay a $35 licensing fee and your whole household can use it.

So we've talked about that. We're going to talk about that more in depth this time in why this is really the best starting point for families who want a real working communications plan, who want a little bit more than the bubble pack radios that they're kids. got for Christmas about six years ago and they just found them as they were cleaning out for the for the yard sale so we're actually going to get into the what does GMRS do when the rubber meets the road or when the cell towers stop working and you need an alternative right so we're talking range power and reality we're talking marketing versus miles and no offense no offense guys but we're not talking YouTube hype here I'm not trying to sell you the newest

latest, greatest balfing for $17. I just want to help you understand what these radios in this service can and cannot do for your family. Before we continue, this show is sponsored by the Family Connect system. It is a system that I've developed to help you and your family stay connected if and when. These cell networks go down. If and when AWS collapses again, maybe stuff just, maybe it's a bad day. Maybe it's a tornado and you don't know what to do, what you would do. Family Connect system will help you with that.

We'll talk about it more in a few minutes. But first, this is one of the questions I got, and folks wanted some more clarification on after the first episode here in the series, if I buy this license, really, who can talk underneath me or underneath my license? Well, we go back and we look at the FCC rulebook who is in charge of the spectrum in the U.S. Part 95, subpart E, and you'll find 95.1705. You can look it up, and I think there's a link in the show notes or in the blog post here. It says that GMRS license covers you and your immediate family members.

Now, you know, I know some people's trees are different, right? So like your tree may come down a couple of branches and split and just start a whole new tree, or you may have a tree that's grafted in, and now it's got a couple of different kinds of fruit on it. I don't know. But that's my funny way of saying spouse, kids, parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, and in-laws. Brothers of your dad, maybe as an uncle, I mean, again, it's a great area. Here's an easy way to look at it.

If they're in your family tree, they can pick up and talk and use your call sign. They don't have to pay any fees. They don't have to take any test or anything. They can do that. The catch, there is a catch. You, if your name is on the license, if you're the license holder of that call sign, like I am the license holder. of WRBR-237, that's my GMRS associated call sign that the FCC gave me when I applied and paid the fees,

okay, I'm the license holder, I am responsible for everything that happens underneath that call sign. So my kid picks up the radio and gets on one of the local GMRS repeaters and is being foolish and saying things that are dumb and you know causing interference or whatever and he's using my call sign and I'm out in Reno Nevada on vacation and he's here in South Carolina doesn't matter because he's still doing it with my call sign which makes me responsible I'm the responsible party for everything that happens if someone's using that call sign all right that's just how it is so you have to be cautious in who you share. You have to be cautious in who you share your license with. Now,

the license is a piece of paper that you can print, and the call sign is what's on the license. So it's not like you have to hand your brother-in-law a paper copy of it, but he does need to be aware of what the call sign is, because just like we talked last week, every 15 minutes And at the beginning and end of the conversation on the radio, you have to identify yourself with that call sign. The easiest way to do this is a silver sharpie marker. And you take the silver sharpie and you write on, because most radio chassis are black, you write with a silver sharpie on the radio, the call sign.

If you've got one of those printers, the little label makers, it's even easier. Type it in, print it off, stick it to the radio. So here's the easiest way to say it, going back to who. you should allow to use it. Okay. The rules are written on purpose. You have to trust the people you're allowing to use the radio under you, under your call sign. GMRS is for, you know, we're talking families here, so they're expecting you to be familiar with the people that you're allowing to use your call sign and trust them. And I would say, here's how it's it in South Carolina. If you wouldn't hand that person, the keys to your pickup truck, don't let them

use your call sign. There you go. That's an easy way to do it. If you don't trust them with the keys to your boat, don't trust them with your call sign. Okay. All right. So we've heard in the last show and you hear online and the marketing and whatever, you know, let's talk about wattage. We won't talk about more power, more power. And you'll see some of the radios and see some guys talking up to 50 watts. And that is the legal maximum output power for mobile base and repeater transmitters under 95.171. I'm sorry, 1767A1. But here's the thing. And we've talked about this before. We'll talk about it numerous times until we finish with this program. More power doesn't always mean more distance. Go all the way back to the CB radio shows where I was talking about as a kid,

illegal power amplifiers. You know, you'd buy these huge amplifiers and have them plugged into a junkie antenna. And you're like, I don't know why they can't hear me. This is a Texas star 250, you know, but you had this antenna mounted to your bumper. There was a fiberglass whip that was only about four feet tall because you thought it looked cool, but it wouldn't perform worth anything because there was no ground plane. And I'm not trying to talk above your head. I'm just saying more power doesn't always mean more distance. Okay. That's a great example from back in my ignorant days of CB radio operating. Not that CB guys are ignorant. I was because I didn't understand the antenna makes the difference okay so you can take a five-watt walkie-talkie with a roof-mounted

antenna on your home and it will outperform a 50-watt base station or a mobile radio like in your car connected to a junkie antenna and again especially in regards to GMRS it's because how you get out there how your signal is sent and received with these type of frequencies is line of sight. So elevation, getting above things, right? Having more forward gain on an antenna. It's great that people can hear you, but can you hear them? I mean, so you have to take all these things into consideration

because radio waves, they travel straight, right? So the higher you get up the antenna, the farther your signal can see, and I'm doing air quotes there, and it can be seen. So you want to be able to have a good antenna. You want to be able to put in place an antenna at the highest point that you can. And let's just take your car, for instance. You're inside your car with a walkie-talkie. So you've got a little radio with a little antenna surrounded by a Faraday cage.

And you're like, I don't know why anyone can't hear me. Get a magnet antenna, put it on the roof of your car, and it's going to change your life. because the signal is able to get out, it's elevated, it's tuned, and it's not inside a Faraday cage. So think about it kind of like a flashlight. So you're out in the field, you know, just imagine it's dark and you're out there in the corn. I like the children of the corn movie, right? And you can only kind of see as far as your light will go. I won't go real far because it's, you've got a lot of stuff in the way.

you've got like corn stalks and weeds and you're down at that level. But just imagine if you were to get up on top of the barn or maybe the silo and you were able to take the same flashlight, you could see a lot further. Yeah. I mean, you can see a lot further because you have that space where there's nothing between you, your line of sight, so you're increasing your capacity, you're higher, you're above the things. it works the same way with your radio. That's why you see people when their phones aren't

working, they're holding them up over their heads, you know, trying to find a better signal or something. It happens all the time on my farm because we only have one carrier that really works down here, which is kind of fun. But anyway, stuff gets in the way of radio signals. So, you know, the power is going to help get you through those things. But at some point, the power is only going to do as much as it can and then you're going to really need you're really going to need that elevation you're going to need that extra antenna that above the roof of the car above the roof of the house so you can have 50 watts okay 50 watts up to 50 watts on GMRS makes a big difference I mean it really makes a big difference unless you don't have a way to control that or a way to

to amplify that, which is the wrong word to use, maybe send it in the correct direction or have it above the distractions or the displacement, the stuff that's in the way of the signal. So height above ground level, just like going back to MURS, because we can have these external antennas, we can have this height above ground level,

we can have these bigger numbers of output wattage, you got to have it. So if you're thinking about doing GMRS, and the cool thing about GMRS is, everybody gets hung up on walkie talkies in regards to every radio service except maybe cb radio everybody all they want is walkie talkies and it's because we're used to having a phone in our pocket and we see them use them in the movies and they're talking all over the world and whatever oh man i have so many walkie talkies this embarrassing i honestly don't know how many i own

i really don't know and outside of running fire calls with the local fire department squeaky chair without if I didn't do anything with the fire department I would almost never use a walkie talkie or in the ham radio hobby we call it a handy talkie an ht or a w t how's that so don't get hung up on the walkie talkie thing you can buy these radios for GMRS they're micro I mean they're so tiny you can install it in your car they're small enough to go between your front seat and your console. And you don't even have to have a mounting bracket. You just kind of shove it in. And it's going to hold it there. They're so, they're so tiny. They'll go in a little spots like that. And they'll give you so much more power than your handy talky, walkie talk.

And they also connect to an external antenna. And oh, man, I'm telling you, just don't get hung up on the walkie talkies, especially if you want to talk to your friends while you're driving to work or maybe you're traveling with your family, the external antenna on your car is going to make a huge difference. Now, last time, again, we talked, and we even mentioned this in the FRS series, but we talked about the marketing on the boxes. I'm sorry about my chair. It just makes too much noise. I sat down in the wrong one as I started recording. So on the marketing box, the boxes are the claims on the internet, the reviews, 99% of the people are going to be straight with you. They're not going to talk as far as they claim on the boxes. It's just not going to do it. And it's marketing.

It's not reality. So can you talk 36 miles on GMRS? You can probably talk a lot further than that if the conditions were correct. If you were, you know, in the middle of space with nothing between you and the other station. Yeah, you could do that. Is it realistic? For most people? No, it's not. It's not unless you live out, you know, in the high plains or something. And a lot of people live in a neighborhood. A lot of people live in the city. Even like us out here in the rural area, our VHF radios, which would be like the MERS, we've talked about, worked better than the GMRS radios,

just because the signal happens to interact with its surroundings differently. So if you live in town with houses and trees, you could probably expect maybe a mile or two with GMRS. That depends on how many houses and trees you have between you and the other station. It also depends on what type of radio and antenna are you using and what type of antenna and radio are they using, right? It's one thing that you can get out. You've got 50 watts and a big antenna, but if they don't have enough to get back to

you, they may hear you, but you may not be able to hear them. Suburban areas, you may get three to five miles. Again, what's in between you and the other station? Open ground rural 10 to 15 miles. I think that's kind of a stretch. But you got repeaters? Well, if you can get to the repeater, however large the footprint of the repeater is, is how far you can talk, maybe 20, 30, 50 miles, depending on the height of the repeater

and its footprint. So, you know, you can't judge by what the box says. You can't judge by what the Amazon description says. You're going to have to judge it by the terrain. it's going to be used in, how you're going to use it, how your antennas are going to be situated. If you live in hills or if you live in a wooded area, forested area, it's going to eat your signal up pretty good. But if you live out on the flat plains, we've mentioned a hundred times, or maybe down even near the coast where it's just flatter, you're going to be shocked.

But again, it's still going to depend on your antennas. Are you guys tired of hear me say that yet? It's the antenna. All right. So if you want to take it, if you want to make a test, you and your your partner, your wife, your spouse, your oldest kid, whatever, you stand them there in the front yard and you get in the car and you take off and you go a certain direction and see how far you can talk. And then when you get to the end of the neighborhood, you're like, man, I can't talk any further. Then say, well, what would it be like if I had an elevated antenna on the house? It's worth the 70 or 80 bucks you'll spend, I promise. You probably should run tests like this. So if you buy your stuff and you get your license and you're wanting to see how far we can go,

and all you have is walkie-talkies? We'll try it with walkie-talkies. And then say, well, what if I put a magnet antenna on my car and connected it to my walkie-talkie? That'll make a difference. What about if I put my walkie-talkie connected at home to an external antenna that's on the chimney? Big difference.

And test it that way and see what's working best for you. And that way you'll know when I go to the office, I can call back home. It might be that you have a nice little base station at home. and you work on the 12th to 13th floor of some building, and you take a walkie-talkie in, and from that elevation to your elevated antenna at home, you might have an intercom. It'd be great, but you won't know to your test, right?

And again, oh, antennas, antennas, antennas, yes, it's, oh, man, this is in ham radio, in CB radio, and these GMRS radios, all these hobbies, you find the last thing, that anybody wants to talk about is the most important thing anybody wants to talk about. And that's the antenna. Again, I'm sorry. We're going to have to stay there for just a minute because, like in the amateur radio hobby, ham radio. We have these guys and they'll go buy these, you know, $4,000 ham radios to put in their radio shack, their room where all their radios are.

And they'll connect it to this junkie antenna. And they'll get online and, oh, this is the worst radio. I made the biggest mistake ever spending all this money. and they've got a junky antenna. Or are these guys buy these really nice B-TEC GMRS pro radios? And they're like, man, I just wish it would perform better. And they're still using the factory antenna, which is a good antenna, by the way. But those can be replaced with an even better antenna.

So don't get hung up on buying more stuff. Or if you buy something and it doesn't work as well as you thought it would, have you tried the antenna yet? Have you tried to replace the antenna? and have you tried to use something better than what came with it? Don't go buy another, this was a huge Instagram post of mine a while back, don't go buy another radio. Buy something to make the radio you have perform better.

So the little rubber duckeys that come with the radios out of the box, they're not the best. I mean, they will transmit, they will receive, but they're in large part, they're not great. Some of them are not even good. So what I always do is encourage people to find an alternative intent. Of course, I recommend the ZBM2 QPWIP is thick. It works great.

And you can save some money with prepcom's coupon code. Link in the show notes. Another one that we're carrying in our store now, just sold out yesterday, is the Wilcom's roll-up J-Pole now for MERS and GMRS. So we have the Ham Radio version and the MERS GMS. MRS. We're backstocking that now. And then there's centerfire antenna makes a great when I put it in the show notes. It's a tunable ground wave, a quarter wave, sorry, quarter wave antenna to use on those frequencies. So another great way. You can get on Amazon. There'll be show note links. I mean, it's all out there. You're going to spend money. If you're not spending more for your antenna than you are your radio, you're kind of doing it wrong, especially when it comes to these little $20, $40, $50 walkie-talkies. If you can replace and improve the antenna, and it doesn't cost you more than the radio itself,

you still didn't do enough. Oh, man, everybody hates that. It's like the water filter business. Nobody wants to buy a water filter because it's not sexy and you can't talk about it. And it just sits there and makes clean water. But you have to have clean water to survive. Check the show notes. you can exponentially increase a range of your radios by just swapping the antennas.

Maybe stepping on top of the roof of your truck, maybe going to, you know, a couple of floors up in a building, height over ground level with a great antenna. It's like putting a supercharger on the 392 charger. I don't know. Those sound great, by the way. And it's really, you're going to spend more money than you think. you should, but the results are going to be fantastic. All right, so we're getting close here. Let's talk Simplex repeaters, Simplex and repeaters. So there's two ways to talk on GMRS.

We've talked a little bit about this before, but sometimes it still messes with people. They don't know the terms, and it doesn't make you a dummy that you don't know the terms. You're not a radio guy. Maybe. Maybe you are. But the term Simplex. All right, and just think about it. Take the X off of it. It's simple. And what the, term Simplex means is you're talking directly from one radio to another radio on the same frequency. All right. So when you and your kids are in the backyard playing with the walkie-talkies, you're talking Simplex. When you're talking on a CB radio to another station, you're talking simplex. When you're using MERS radios at your job at Costco, talking to the guy at the front

while you're breaking down boxes, you're using Simplex. One radio to another. You're using Simplex. One radio to another radio on the same frequency. That's it. That's what Simplex means. You see how simple that is. Simplex, one radio to the next. There's nothing in between you guys except space, right? The other option is repeaters.

And these things are usually on very tall towers or maybe a mountaintop if you live nearby. And they listen on one frequency all the time. They're listening. And whatever they hear, they are rebroadcasting or reprobbing. repeating that same thing on another frequency. All right. So on GMRS is typically listening on 467 megahertz and retransmitting at the same time on 462 megahertz.

Okay. Does that make any sense? It's listening on one. So when you press the push to talk button, it transmits on frequency A. The repeater receives it and then retransmits. it on frequency B, which your radio is programmed to be listening to. It only changes frequencies when you press your push to talk button.

And they're programmed that way, and they're meant to work that way. It allows you to repeat what you're saying over a broader area. So we got Simplex, you and the kids in the backyard, radio to radio. repeaters you in the backyard to the repeater your buddy on the other side of the town listening and hearing you they can literally take your little five mile bubble that you've built with your simplex gmr s radios you can stretch it across the county some multiple counties but you got to remember that people have paid for this equipment they've bought it they've installed it they've serviced it they maintain it they pay the bills they pay where the tithe

rent, they make sure that the antenna is operable, everything. And generally, what they're asking you to do, what they ask you to do is to ask for permission to use that system. And it's pretty simple. There's some websites. I'll link it in, I think it's my gMRs.com, but they've got the different repeaters and different geographical areas around the U.S. and who to contact and ask permission to use. And some people may say, okay, you can use it, but what are you going to be using it with? They want to know what equipment you have and whatnot. So if that offends you. I don't know. I don't know what to tell you. It's their stuff. It's their sandbox. The biggest thing to do is remember to always idea yourself on the repeaters properly and follow

their etiquette. They may have certain rules where, you know, they want you to say your call sign in your name, or it might just be the number part of your call sign. I don't know. It's their sandbox. You guys will have to learn how to play in their sandbox with their sand. So we're going to get more into repeaters, how to find them, how to connect them, and how to talk to those folks, and make sure you're not getting in the way or doing it wrong or offending people. And you're like, well, it's America. I get that. But this is somebody's stuff that they've bought.

They've spent thousands of dollars on. They're paying a monthly power bill they probably never ask you to contribute to. And all they're asking you to do is to do it the way they're wanted done. So simple. We'll talk more about it next time. Just leave you a fence at the door because I'm trying to help you. I'm really trying to help you get this to make it work for you and your family. And it might be like, well, I don't want that.

I want my own. But that's great. Find you a mountain top. I can help you with the equipment. We can get you plugged in, get you started. You have your own private repeater. And then you can determine who is and who's not on there. I mean, I don't know.

Other than that, what are you going to do? That's the great thing about these radio services. That's what I love about them in regards to preparedness. Is it they're like in the amateur radio community, we build our own infrastructure. with the GMRS folks that are building their own infrastructure and it's out there and they're opening it up for the majority of people to use they just ask that you followed their rules which coincide with the FCC rules I don't think it's too much to ask I am that guy all right so here's what you got to remember before we go I've gone long I say that every time

and I apologize the more power helps so the 50 watts that you can get on GMRS yeah thumbs up more power but don't forget that height and a better intent is always going to trump the extra power. Remember, it's not about gear. You've got to know the limits before you need to use them. So if you're building a system for your family, you really need to be testing this stuff. You really need to be testing with it.

If you haven't got your GMRS license yet, it might be because the government is still shut down. But that doesn't mean that you can't apply. And as soon as they open up, you'll be in the queue and you can get your license. So check the show notes. I've built a license express guide. And the FCC, I said it last time, their website is terrible.

It can be so frustrating, even the people who use it a lot. So I built this guide that's a set of prompts, and you follow the prompts, and it tells you exactly where to click, what to click, what to put in the boxes, and you can get, you know, get prepared to get your license. Don't forget on Thursday night, so on Facebook Live, I'm doing the Family Connect System webinar. I have a replay from Friday to Monday. If you want to learn more about it, you can connect. with me there at family connect system.com. This is in the show notes, but it's

family connect system.com where I will teach you and help you understand how to build these systems for your family. Anyway, I'd love to have you there. It's Thursday nights at 7 p.m. Eastern, because I'm an Eastern time kind of guy. I'm Caleb, K4 CDNWRBR 237. I appreciate you being here. Hope you've enjoyed this show. Thank you for the chats and the comments. Love hearing from you. Show this with your friends, your family. Everybody needs. needs to be putting these things in the place because we don't know when it's going to stop

working again. That sounds so fun, right? Guys, thank you again for listening, 73. God bless. Thank you.