Prep Comms - How To Actually Use Gmrs As A Family

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

Most families buy GMRS radios… then realize no one actually knows how to use them when the phones go quiet. This episode fixes that. Today we walk through the simple, practical skills every household needs to use GMRS with confidence: • The 3-button rule • How to choose the right channel group without a chart • How to know if you're hitting a repeater • What to do when you hear nothing • The 10-second teaching script for non-technical adults • A weekly household radio routine that actually works No programming. No deep tech. Just clear steps any family can follow. Mentioned in the show: Register for the Winter Backup Plan Webinar (Dec 9): https://live.prepcomms.com Prep Comms Network Founders Pricing: https://founders.prepcomms.com Family Advent Calendar: https://www.familyconnectsystem.com/advent-calendar GMRS + MURS Gear (my store): https://www.familyconnectsystem.com/storehome 73 y'all & God Bless.   ****Master Class (12/15/25) https://www.familyconnectsystem.com/masterclass-order-page

You know, every family has hit the same, like, brick wall with GMRS radios. They buy them. They charge them up. They write their channels and they label and hand them out to the family. Maybe even clip them to your kid's backpack. And, you know, then something happens. Maybe the phone stop working or the weather turns off and knocks the power out at the house. Or maybe you just decide that, you know what, I believe we're going to run a test. And then everybody realized, hang on a minute. We really don't know how to use these things. So welcome back into the prepcoms podcast.

I'm your host Caleb Nelson, K4CDN, and since we're talking GMRS, WRBR-237, happy to be back with you. In the midst of a lot of wild things happening here. Happy after Thanksgiving, I don't know. Glad you're here. So it's been busy. The sinuses have been,

driving me crazy. And some of you guys are in the middle of a bunch of snow right now. We had frost this morning here at the house. Woo! Now it's like 50. But, you know, I was recently on a guest on a net just last night. Probably not when you're hearing this, but Facebook group, the, gosh, I don't want to say it wrong. I've been saying it wrong all day long.

It is the Dooms Day Radio Preppers Facebook. Facebook group. They had me on and did, I guess you'd call it an interview. It was, it was a lot of fun. And don't let the name fool you. There's some really good guys. Nobody's digging bunkers over there. It's a good group. You should check them out. So let's just hit a couple of things here real quick. Of course, we are into the fifth episode of our GMRS radio show. I'm sure some of you are probably counting. So we're about a minute and 58 seconds in and I haven't started topic. But I got something we'll talk about real quick first. I've got a webinar. And if you're listening to this, like the day or two after it comes out, the webinar is scheduled for December the night at 7 o'clock in the evening.

It's a free webinar to sign up. It's on Zoom. You just go to live. coms.com. And if you're driving and you can't write it down, it's okay, it's in the show notes, live. Dot prepcoms.com. Also, the founder's pricing of the prepcoms network is still there. And following that webinar, the following week, the week of December of the few,

15th, I'll be doing a nightly master class. I don't like that term, but that's what we're calling it. So there'll be details for that on the live. That prepcoms.com.com. And the Advict calendar is online if you want to keep up with us. It's actually been kind of fun. I've been doing morning live, yeah, like crawling out of the bed with the sinus garbage and coming out here and doing these live videos for our adventure calendar where we're talking

about comms and whatnot for your family. It's on YouTube. check it out under Lives. So GMRS radio. Let's get into it. Most families, they don't fail at this stuff because of the radio is being too complicated. I mean, seriously, you probably have a set of these and you know like I do. They're not complicated. Most of them just don't know how to use it like when they need to use it. Now, I'm not talking about programming. I'm not talking about changing the tones and going through the menus. I'm talking about how do you know how to choose the right channel? how do you call somebody the right way?

How do you know that the radio is doing what you actually think it's doing? And what happens when the other person can't hear you? I mean, gosh, some of you may be wishing you couldn't hear me right now with all this sign. It's garbage, but here we are, right? So here's something we do here around the house, around the farm. And if I'm sitting there talking to you man to man, we're going to talk, this is how we're going to make our radios work. Three button rule. Okay.

we're going to find that. Where's the power button? Where's the power knob? You know, it could be a button. It could be a knob. Where's the channel selector? How do we change the channels on this dude? You know, up and down. Is that a knob? Is it buttons? Most of them nowadays are buttons. And then where's the push to talk. And then where's the push to talk. And that's what we're going to talk about today. Because your family needs to know how to do these things. They need to know how to turn the radio on. they need to know how to find the right channel that you guys have agreed upon. And they need to know how to press the push to talk button and speak clearly. I mean, because nothing's worse than you hand the radio to your kid and like, I'm over here trying to get out of the back door to do. You know, I mean, what? And that sounded funny, but you know, you know as well as I do, your kids do the same thing.

So listen, GMRS is not supposed to be complicated. It just becomes complicated because we don't train our fast. family well enough to prevent the complications. So here's the thing. You know, with amateur radio, we have these regulations of where we can talk, where we can't talk, what our limits are. Although compared to GMRS is virtually limitless. But I'm just saying we've got, you know, spots in different frequency bands we can talk inside of. You don't need that for GMRS.

Your radios are programmed from the factory with the right channels in them. So let's just make this a little easy, okay? We kind of talked about this last time. We're going to just hit on it again. If you need to talk further, like if you want to get into some repeaters, find the local repeaters at myGMRS.com. Use channels 15 through 22.

If you're in the neighborhood, if you're around the same campground, if you've got somebody in the front yard, somebody at the neighbor's house, channels one through seven. If you're inside the house, or if you're very close together on the highway, use channels 8 through 14. All right.

Long ways away, 15 to 22, a little less than long ways away, 1 through 7. And if you can see each other, talk on channels 8 through 14. Those are the lower power frequencies. And they're made that way for a reason so that you're not blowing someone else upon these other frequencies. So, again, if you need distance, use the repeaters. channels 15 through 22. If you're close by, same neighborhood, same campground, et cetera, channels one through seven, if you can see the other person, it's only half a watt, okay, channels 8 through 14.

And again, I want to encourage you, my gmRS.com. I don't make anything for sending you over there, but that's who's going to give you permission to use their repeaters. And again, they built these things out of their back pockets. So respect that. Ask for permission. And, hey, it may even be. I keep saying this.

I hope y'all are listening. Find out who's running these things and see if you're going to use them. See if you can help them. See if you can help them pay the bill. See if you can help go by and trim the grass or something. All right. How do you know when you're hitting a repeater? Get this question.

Well, we call it kerchunking. Kerchunking is when you press your push to talk button and let off and you hear a click like, oh, and it goes away. That means the repeater heard you, and it's just kind of acknowledging that. If you do that more than once, you're a kerchunker. And that's very bad form. That's a nice way to say it. Don't be a kerchunker.

All right. So here's how you do that. You key the radio. That means press the push to talk button. You say your call sign. Press the button, WRBR-237. And then you let off the button. And when you do, you'll hear a little click.

But it's not the click in your radio, like the push-to-talk button releasing. It's the actual signal coming back to you where it's a little sk-k. And if you hear the... that sound, you know that your radio is making it, at least making it to the repeater enough that it can open it. Now, your signal may not be strong enough to be heard well, but the signal is getting there and it's activating the repeater for the retransmission. Okay. If you don't hear that, you're not getting there. The end. I mean, there's, it's not like hard here, guys. You've replaced the antenna. You've connected it to an outdoor antenna. Maybe you're in your car

with a high power radio or you got a base station. If you're trying to contact a repeater and you check the tones and made sure everything matches just like their stuff on my gmrs.com says, and you can't get that little kerchunk back to you, you're not getting there. And either you don't have enough power, your antenna can't hear or send well enough. There's a problem there. If you're not, you're just simple X, right? So anybody around you can hear you.

The repeater can't, though. All right. I don't want to get too far into that because, I mean, I take so much of this for granted. I know. If you need more on that, let me know. I'll be happy to go deep in that section maybe next time or even do something somewhere else. Let me know. If you need more on that, let me know.

All right. So here's what you have to do as the comms person in your family. We said it at the beginning. They're not going to know what you don't teach them. Captain Avi. So you got to teach them how to turn the power on. Go to channel whatever you agreed on. Push the talk button.

Talk slowly. Let go with the button. That's it. That's all you have to teach them. How do they turn it on? How do they adjust the volume? How do they adjust the channel? How do you use the push to talk?

And I know some of you guys are like, is he seriously doing a podcast? Yes, I am because I have learned in the last two weeks. There are so many amazing people out there that I've been. speaking to that just don't know this. And I'm not making fun of them for not knowing, and you shouldn't either because you didn't know it one time. But here's the thing. Not everybody's live what we've lived. Not everybody's done what we've done. So there are things that I don't know about. Like how do you tune the Honda CB 650 from the 1970s with four independent carburetors? I don't know how to do

that. I don't want to learn. But I know. that it's near impossible unless you know a CB 650, whatever it was, like in and out. I don't know, don't want to know. I can't have another motorcycle anyway, according to my wife. So that's what, that's the whole point, though. We take a lot of this stuff for granted. There's so many people that need help, and that's what we're here for. So thank you. If you're brand new or you know it all, thank you for being here. All right. So a lot of times, you'll even teach your family those things, right? Your teacher group those things. I talk a lot about family because I'm a family guy. but you might be your mutual assistance group.

It might be your church parking lot group. It could be anything. But in case you're teaching or showing and instructing, you teach them those things early. Now, if that doesn't work, sometimes they're on the wrong frequency. It could be, the radios might be on the wrong channel.

I'm serious. You think I'm being funny. I'm being very serious. Sometimes it's just the fact that there's something in the way between the two radios like a big metal building. It could be that you're on a lower power frequency, but it's going to take a higher power frequency. Maybe you're in the wrong channel group.

Remember, we talked about just a couple of minutes ago. If you find a point where you just can't make the connection, try the higher power frequencies because a lot of these radios that come pre-programmed properly according to the rules of the FCC. So if you try those middle channels, you're going to have half a watt. And you're going to be disappointed when it won't talk from here to Mimon's house. So try the higher channels, get the more power, get a real radio that's got a lot of power up to 50 watts and a real antenna with some great feedline. You'll be shocked.

Okay. We're not there yet. Listen, you don't need to like drill into your family that the end of the world is tomorrow and you have to practice these radios and be proficient with it. Our dad's going to kick you out of the family. No. But you do need to spend time with whomever you're. you're taking time on the radios with. And you also need you as the person in charge of that. You need to from time to time make sure the radios actually come on when you turn the switch on.

Make sure the batteries are charged up. Put one over there in the corner and take one over here the other side of the room and call to make sure it can hear and click back on the other one to see if you can hear back and forth. If you can't talk to two, you know, to two radios in the same room, something's wrong. But it's your place. We're going to make it your place to find out. these things. You know, a lot of guys will write with the Sharpie markers. We've talked about that, the gold, the silver, or the black, if it's a fluorescent colored radio. Another way is to make a little small laminated thing. Everybody has a laminarator, right? I mean, if you're a prepper, you probably have a laminar. Laminate some cards, you know, put a hole in it, put a string through it,

tight to the radio so that everybody knows, hey, this is Channel 4. This is what we talk on when we're camping. And we're talking channel 16 if we're away from home, something like that. So anyway, again, I don't want to go too deep in this because I've gone some long shows lately and I don't want to do that. But I just want to encourage you. One, if you know how to do this, it doesn't mean because you do everybody else does. Two, be patient. Take time. Man, I know like some of the most frustrating things I've ever experienced in my life from my kids.

My poor dad. Nothing humbles you as a father until you have kids who act just like you did. And so yeah, sorry, Dad. He's probably not listening. Probably a reason for that. Anyway, so there we go. It's just simple stuff this time. Take time with your family, your group, those you're leading with these communication solutions.

Make sure everybody's radio is on the same channel. Make sure they understand where the push to talk is. Make sure they know what channel they're supposed to be on in case they bump the radio and accidentally change the channel. You have that a lot with those channel selectors that are push button versus the knob that clicks on the top. So just bear that in mind. Not everybody again knows what you know, but everybody needs to understand so that you guys can work together. And that's it. Man, less than 15 minutes.

But before we go, again, December the night, that's 7 p.m. Now, if you're listening after the night, I'm sorry, you missed it. But December the night, 9 p.m. 2025, live on Zoom. I'll be doing a free webinar. It's about an hour long. We're going to talk about how to build a plan for your family's communication stuff. And it's going to be interactive. It's going to be a lot of fun.

I'm kind of excited about it. And I'd love to see you there. You sign up. I need you to register because it's a Zoom call. And you register at live. Dot prepcoms.com. That's it. Live.

coms. com. Also, the following week, I believe it's the 15th of the month, the 15th of December. Yep, I'll start a master class. It's a paid class. Inexpensive, by the way. But we'll talk about it on the webinar, but it'll be a masterclass five nights that week, live together where we're going to do further develop our family communications plan, dial it down specifically to our family and the needs and whatnot. Additionally, we have our founders pricing that's still open. That's our monthly group. It's our community group.

where we meet monthly and do skills and training and all kind of stuff. So there's stuff online for that. I'll send found. I think it's founders. Dotpcoms.com. This will all be in the show notes because I know you're not. I can hardly remember it all. And of course, the Advent calendar is still rocking.

And it's been kind of fun. It's not really fun to get up and come here and do the lives in the morning when it's cold. But I don't like videos. So it's kind of forcing me to do it. And I know that's a good thing. But most importantly, I appreciate you. Checking it out. Seeing what you think.

Show notes, man, the show notes are full of everything. Like my sinuses are full of mucus right now. So I apologize. Gross, isn't it? But I got to go. And we're actually next time going to talk about how families actually communicate with one another. The do's, the don'ts, and how to just keep it calm and clear when it counts. All right.

Remember, all this stuff is in the show notes. I appreciate you guys listening. It's the holiday season. Christmas is almost here. My kids are already excited about it. Snow's falling all over the U.S. except in South Carolina, and maybe we'll see some. I hope you have a great day. It's been fantastic for me to spend my time with you. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Check the show notes. I'll be back later on. But until then, 73, y'all, God bless.