Prep Comms - MURS: The Underdog That Still Works

Episode Date: July 21, 2025

Most people don’t even know what MURS is—and that’s exactly why it works so well. In this first episode of the Prep Comms MURS Mini-Series, Caleb breaks down the quiet power of the Multi-Use Radio Service: a license-free, analog-only VHF service with just five channels and a lot of practical potential. You’ll learn about its roots in the old business band, what the “Color Dot” frequencies mean, why MURS is legal without a license, and how it fits into a low-key family comms plan. Privacy, power limits, antenna rules, and gear you can actually use—it’s all covered here. Listen in, and discover why MURS might be the perfect base layer in your emergency communications setup. In this episode: The FCC origin of MURS and its roots in the Business Band (DOT and STAR channels) What MURS can and can’t do legally (no digital, no repeaters) Antenna height limits and the truth about privacy tones How MURS works around barns, homes, driveways, and family outings Why VHF still outperforms UHF in open terrain My own family’s use of MURS as part of the Cascade Protocol Mentioned in this episode: Free MURS + Business Band Frequency Guide PDF: MURS Frequency PDF Recommended MURS radios & antennas (Caleb’s gear list): Caleb's Amazon Store: Search MURS Want to go deeper? Watch the free on-demand webinar (Coming August 2025): How to Build a Family Communication Plan in Less Than 30 Minutes—Without Expensive Gear or Tech Confusion www.familyradiowebinar.com

You probably never heard anyone brag about their M-U-R-S or MERS radios before. And maybe that's exactly the point. In today's show, we're going to be digging into the most overlooked, underused, underappreciated radio service for preppers that still works incredibly well, if you know how to use it. This is MERS, and this is the Prepcoms Podcast. This episode is sponsored by the Family Connect System, my step-by-step online course to help your family stay connected when the grid goes down or just general chaos shows up. Registration is open now at familyradiowebinar.com.

Familyradiowebinar.com. What is Merz Radio? Welcome back to the program. Caleb Nelson here, K4CDN, WRBR 237. And there's some other federal identification numbers I could share, but they all get you to my post office box here in Pauline, South Carolina. MERS radio, oh it has been something I have loved so dearly for so long, to the point in full transparency as you always find me

here I wouldn't tell people about MERS. I refused to share MERS with anyone else for the longest time because it is such a great radio service for families, for businesses, for farms, and if you're not using it and you've never even heard of it, that's why I haven't shared it for so long. And it honestly, guys, it just got to the point where I realized you can't hold these things forever. If you're gonna come out here and you're gonna help people

and you're gonna try to encourage and educate people to make the best decisions for their families in emergency communications and methods and ways, then you have to be full on transparent. And I've matured, you know, I'm over 50 now. So, uh, I've got almost everybody, but one in my house has an amateur license. We have radios everywhere. So I don't have to like, you know, not to bulldog this so hard anymore, but the deal is MERS radio, just as I said in the introduction, you probably don't hear a lotdog this so hard anymore, but the deal is MERS radio.

Just as I said in the introduction, you probably don't hear a lot of people bragging on it. You probably don't hear really anybody talking about it much at all anymore. With the advent of the GMRS system, the low cost licensing for that now, as well as the repeaters and the market just saturating right now with equipment for that service that we're going to talk about in a couple of shows, but I'll start right here with MERS because you know, the last time we were together, we talked about CB radio, the history of how I grew up using it and loved it,

et cetera, and how it's still a very viable tool for those of you who are just getting into communications. And maybe you have something laying around that you want to use in your preparedness, you know, toolbox for communications, because here's the deal. There's not one good answer that fits all the boxes. Like you can't, you can't take anything. Even amateur radio doesn't check all the boxes. Okay.

Let's just be frank. It's, it's, it's great. It's probably one of the best answers, but Uncle Sam and some business guys have even better communications than that. So as I sit here, that was a paint can adjusting itself to the temperature in the shack here or the studio. It's very hot.

I wanna talk to you about Merge radios. Like I said, it's one of the best kept secrets, I think, in Prepper radio communications. Nobody really talks about it much at all. Finally, we do have some radios on market. We'll talk about that later, but here's the deal. MERS is M-U-R-S, the Multi-Use Radio Service, and it was created by the FCC back in 2000, you know, Y2K, under the Part 95, you know, laws and regulations there.

What happened was the government had some VHF and UHF business radio frequencies. Now this was before Nextail. This was before, um, sailor was so, so saturated and so cheap. This was before, you know, you saw the trucks with GPS tracking them and whatnot. This was what we called back then the VHF business band. And going all the way back to the 80s, the 1900s, at Radio Shack, we sold business band radios. I've got a couple of those in my shack. I buy them every chance. I shouldn't say this out loud because you're going to clean the market out on me, but I buy them every chance I get when I see them at a ham fest.

Uh, they're just really low power. They kind of look like a CB radio. They only got, I think, two or five channels of them. I haven't turned mine on in a long time, but anyway, it's a great little radio. It's a pre-packaged deal. Use it as a base station is what I primarily do with mine. But here's the deal. So the government took some of their business band frequencies and they opened them up as license free. I'm not talking GMRS, FRS, I'm talking MERS, M-U-R-S, back in 2000,

Y2K, everybody remembers we survived. And in the process, we got five really amazing VHF radio frequencies that businesses use a lot. Now Walmart, Sam's, Costco, Home Depot, entities like that utilize these things. Uh, so if you live close to a suburban retail center, this may not be the best for you, but if you're out in the country, I'm going to explain to you later why this is such a great radio service for us folks in the sticks. Um, I love the fact about MERS a couple of, a couple of facts.

Number one, again, nobody talks about it, which pretty much means nobody uses it, which means it's really quiet and you could probably use it really easily. You don't have to have a call sign. There's no licensing. There's no licensing. There's no special knowledge outside of just the rules and they're pretty minimal. They're strict, but they're pretty minimal. And you just don't have to have a license. You don't have to pay the 35 bucks for GMRS. You don't have to take a test like ham radio. You don't have

to register a business like you do with a business itinerant license. This is you buy the radios, you follow the rules and you share the frequencies with whomever may be nearby. I love this stuff. I've had MERS on the farm since we moved here about 15 years ago. And in our web store, I'll put a link. I've got a whole section on MERS radios. If you guys are looking for that base station, antennas are really important with this, uh, you can use magnet antennas on your cars if you want to. With your handy talkies and whatnot. I've got it in the store and we'll put a link to the show notes.

Now, originally these frequencies, like I said, they're VHF. They're in the 150 megahertz band, that area of the spectrum. And they were originally used, set aside for small medium-sized businesses like warehouses, farms, construction crews, oil. I've talked about the oil trucks in the past before. A lot of those guys would use these frequencies. And I'll explain that to you in just a few minutes why.

But nowadays, that's kind of gone away due to the, the advent of the cell phone. So a lot of these frequencies that were once pretty heavily used, aren't used as much anymore, which makes it great for the prepper because quiet radio frequencies mean you can talk to who you're trying to talk to on your farm, around your, your bug out location or whatever we're going to call it, you can use these frequencies pretty easily and, and kind of just be out there in the gray, if you will. So, uh, now you'll still find Walmart's targets, uh, food service companies. I've heard, you know, some people say Costco, some people say some of the stores at the mall.

Um, a lot of times these companies will just buy, you know, a truck load of these radios pre-programmed or these frequencies and hand them out. They're cheap. They're easy to use. The VHF frequencies work really well inside and outside. And we'll talk about that as well as we keep going. But back in the day, some of these channels were known by color names, dot names, colored dots. So you had the blue dot at one five four dot five seven. You had the green dot, which was one five four dot six and the red dot. Back in the day, one 51 dot six two five. Now that's not a legal MERS frequency anymore, but that is one of the older

dot frequencies from back in the day that the businesses still used. five. Now that's not a legal MERS frequency anymore, but that is one of the older dot frequencies from back in the day that the businesses still used. And some of the older radios, like the Radio Shack radio I mentioned just a little bit ago, those can work in those, usually work in those frequencies. Now also in the show notes, there'll be a link to a PDF that I've created with some of the business band frequencies, as well as the current five channels of MERS frequencies that you can use. So again, always check the show notes. I try to put something there for you. And when you open it, you're going to see we've got dot, colored dots, you got star channels, and all of these frequency were used

back in the day for mobile workforce solutions. Long before digital, digital, cellular are the, uh, you know, the push to talk, which next tell us still miss so wholeheartedly, not even joking about that. But anyway, this was a business chunk of spectrum and the government said, Oh, well this next tell thing is big. Cellular has taken off a GPS and satellites working really well. We're going to open this up. It's not really CB, but it's kind of a VHF CB and anybody can use it.

So if you're in the United States of America, you can use these frequencies legally, if you'll use them legally, you're legal to use the frequencies in the U S with no with no licensing. That's what I love about it. And I think that's what a lot of preppers would love when they realize how robust these frequencies are. There's five channels, five frequencies. These are in megahertz. Okay. So I'll say 151.82 that's 151.82 megahertz. Okay.

You have 151.880, 151.94, the old blue dot frequency of 154.57 and the old green dot frequency, which is 154.600. Now don't freak because you didn't write those down. They're pre-programmed in all the MERS radios and they're also on the checklist that's in the show notes. It's a PDF. It's a free download from here, you know, from us here at the, at the show. They're analog only. So these frequencies are VHF and they're analog only. That means you can't do digital, right? You can't do DMR. You can't do encryption. You can't do DMR, you can't do encryption.

You can't do any sort of packet radio or anything like that. That's all strictly verbotten. You cannot do that on these frequencies legally. And that's kind of a negative, honestly. There's Ham Radio that fixes that, but check this out. Um, this is the, this, I'm going to say this and everybody's going to go off the same time you ready to go ahead.

Uh, two Watts output power limit. I heard you, I heard you say that. Uh, it's not a big deal. Let me tell you why, because, um, although it's only two Watts and you can not use repeaters on MERS frequencies, the antenna height regulations are pretty amazing. So you can put your antenna at least or up to 60 feet above ground or 20 foot above the structure that it's mounted to.

So if you've got an old school television tower, you're out in the Midwest, you're living on a farm, you are legal to use an antenna mounted at 60 feet on that tower. You just have to run the coax down to your base station and you're banging. VHF rocks. I love it's like for us ham radio operators, the closest thing we have to MERS is what's called two meters. It's 144 megahertz. And it's a great service.

It works so well in the rural situation, in the farm situation, out in the country. It'll work in suburbia. But when you get into more of the urban situation, the concrete metal buildings, you know, traffic blocks of roads and buildings, it doesn't work great there. The penetration is not what some other higher frequencies are, but if you're out in the country or if you're camping, this is a great radio service for you.

You can put your antenna at 60 feet above ground or 20 feet above the structure it's mounted to. So let's say you have a two story house, you can put it on the chimney and the antenna can be 20 feet above that structure, the top of the chimney. That gets you some great coverage and they make some great antennas. We've talked about them before, uh, and we'll talk about them. I've got some in the store and there's some other alternatives to want to mention, but my favorite thing about the, the rules, if you

can have favorite rules with MERS, you can put your antenna at 60 feet above the ground or 20 foot above the structure you've got it mounted to. of the ground or 20 foot above the structure you've got it mounted to. And as we talk through this stuff going forward, these CB can talk real close local and it can also talk out further because it's more of a shortwave frequency. These frequencies are more of like your compound,

your farm, your BOL, is that bug out location? It's whatever you call wherever you live or wherever you're going. By and large VHF frequencies work really really well in that situation. So having the capacity to get your antenna way up in the air makes a huge difference. It's great around farm buildings and working outside fields, open land. It'll do better in dense foliage, like the woods. If you're, you're out in the woods or whatever VHF works really, really good. It works a lot better than GMRS, uh, without a repeater.

So we're going to talk more about that later on in another show, but it works great in the rural and suburban situations. What can you use it for? You know, a lot of people are like, I don't want to buy 15 different radios and I totally understand that. So this actually, this service, some good use cases would be traveling in your cars. You you're like, well, I already got a GMRS. That's great. Then use it. But if you don't, and you want something a little different,

MERS rocks for point to point type communications. A lot of times you'll see churches use these frequencies in their parking lots to communicate across their parking attendants, or somebody setting up an event like a bike ride, or some sort of big fly-in or something. These frequencies, you'll find them used there, especially over the open spaces, they work great.

We use them here on our farm, and we have for 15 years with driveway alerts and barn alerts, and we'll talk about that equipment later, but we have used it for as long as we've been here, we love it. You know, maybe your church security team is looking for something different because everybody listens to a GMRS radio that you get at, you know, Home Depot or somewhere, MERS could be a little different, give you just a little added security because it's kind of out there. It's not really talked about a whole lot, as we mentioned earlier.

And it's not that it can be protected or encrypted, but if they don't know you're over here on those frequencies, they're trying to find you on somewhere else, it might give you a little bit of security there. As I mentioned, driveway alerts and intercoms. This is how, man, this is one of the reasons that we moved into wireless communications on our farm. When we got down here, I had four kids. It wasn't long. Zoe showed up as our baby and little kids.

We live way out in the country, but there's a state highway that our property touches. So lots of traffic during the day. And we've got a really cool driveway that's got a great kill box. But the problem is you don't see out of the house a whole lot because the majority of the time you're living in the back of the house. So we would have people show up to visit or to drop mail or to solicit and we didn't know they were here until they were here. And

a company called Dakota alert back in the day, they still manufacture products, but not to the extent they did then they made wireless alarms that were based on and inside the M U R S frequency band. So there was a radio sensor out of the driveway. And when a car drove through that or a deer walked in front of it at night, it would transmit on 151, let's say 820. And there's a receiver in the house connected to a small antenna and it would say alert zone one. And it would say that four or five times. And you knew, Hey, somebody's here to the point that we didn't have a dog in the house back then. But when

alert zone one went off, the kids all knew somebody was here. You know, it's uncle Santa in the brown truck or what, but they knew they were alerted to the alert, which alerted dad. So we've used the Dakota alert products forever. You'll find those in the web store, the Amazon store mentioned earlier. And they offer really one of the only, if not the only affordable base stations that I would recommend for this radio service. It's not, it's not very sexy. Uh, it works really well and it's got an external antenna

connection and things like that. So, uh, we'll talk about equipment later, but if you're kind of interested in something different or you need a driveway alert, Decode Alert products have been great for us for years, four years. Now, some things you can't do with MERS, and I've touched this just a moment ago when I come back and drive this point home, you can't do digital modes over MERS. And you're thinking, I don't even know what a digital mode is. Well, a digital mode is where basically you have a device

connected to a radio that allows you to send ones and zeros or squeaks and whistles and beeps and bops and boops instead of words. Instead of you using your words, you're using a computer to talk for you, to send information and receive information, decode it, um, you can't do that. Right.

So MERS is a voice only radio service. So you have to use your mouth to talk and the dude on the other ends has, they have to use their ears to listen. You can't use repeaters. Uh, you can't use a duplex repeater, a simplex repeater. You cannot use a storm forward repeater. What does any of that mean to you as a brand new listener, a brand new family, trying to figure out what to do with MERS.

It means that you can talk as far as your radio can talk. And that's as far as you can talk with your two Watts, with your antenna, as high as you can get it. That's the service that you can talk with your two Watts, with your antenna as high as you can get it. That's the service that you can utilize with MERS. You can't amplify or repeat the signal as it travels to in, to enhance its capability to go further. What you have is what you got. And if you can get an antenna at 60 feet, you're smoking.

So just remember that, uh, it's not secure or private. So there's no, uh, with a digital mode, you can't encrypt it. You can't protect it. There's no way to keep, uh, anyone from hearing you. If they've got a scanner that picks up VHF, which the vast majority do, uh, they can hear you. You can't. Encode anything. I didn't say you couldn't use code words,

but you can't garble or squelch up your signal to the point where someone can't tell what you're saying. There's privacy tones. You can use privacy tones, but that's a misnomer because it leads the end user to believe that we're private. Well, you are because you're not hearing what's around you. So you can actually block signals from coming in, but you don't block it going out.

So if anyone's out there listening to 151-820, they can hear what's being said. If they enable tones, privacy tones, then they're only gonna hear somebody that has the same privacy tones programmed. And we're gonna cover this stuff, but here's the deal. It's not private. You need to know that Merz is beautiful as it is and all of its glory is not private. So it is a great performer.

You can have some incredible legal limit antenna heights, and it works fabulously in a rural and suburban setting, but people can hear you. Folks can hear you just like on GMRS or FRS, the radios you've always bought from Walmart. People can hear you. MERS is the same way. It's because it's a public radio service, so they're not going to allow you to encrypt your public radio service because it's public and it's free. So you got to know that anybody with a scanner can hear you no matter what you think, uh, they may not be listening, but if they are, they'll be able to hear you.

So here on the farm, we've talked about it before, and I'm wrapping up here. I've used it on driveway alerts for 15 years. I've got it at the intercom in the house, the alert on the driveway, the alert in the barn. So you go in the barn, if you don't know how to cut the alert device off, it will transmit and let everybody in the house know that somebody's in the barn. I've used them. They work great. They also sell a really big honking, handy talkie or a walkie talkie that just loves to eat double A batteries. Don't necessarily suggest that one, but it does

work on the frequencies. It's tough. It's really tough and it's lasted for 15 years for us, but there are better options that you can find in our Amazon store links. Um, my kids have used MERS radios without any worry, without any thinking about licensing or any of that stuff for 15 plus years, uh, we haven't had to like get crazy and program radios or anything like that. This is just a great radio service. Um, you know, and I've built this, uh, family connect system, which you'll be hearing me talk about as we progress and MERS is actually one of the first layers in our cascade protocols.

So when stuff quits working, if you have this type of equipment, this is right where you go because this is some of the easiest, if not the easiest radio service to get into to utilize legally and equitably around your homestead. This is where we start inside the family connect system. So, like I said, I've got some recommended gear in the Amazon store. Uh, that stuff is stuff I've used. I've tested. I like, that's why I put it in there.

Um, and we're going to talk about antennas and height and all that stuff later. But here's the thing. It's like everything you've got to know this going forward again, that the And we're going to talk about antennas and hide and all that stuff later, but here's the thing. It's like everything you've got to know this going forward again, that the antenna will make or break your system. You buy a set of walkie talkies. That's fantastic. You talk around the yard, you talk to the neighbor, you put your antenna at 60 feet

with some nice coax cable and connect it to your walkie talkie or even the little base station. You're going to talk for miles. It's going to be amazing. You're going to be so happy. So anyway, don't forget. Also I've got the free PDF download in the show notes for you. It's the MERS quick reference sheet and it'll be there.

It'll also be in a blog posting that coincides with this particular episode of prepcoms.com. So next time we're going to be breaking down the five frequencies. I'm going to show you how to get the most range out of just two watts. And I've touched on that today and which antennas are going to make the biggest difference because there's a lot of different ways to skin this cat. And it's all about how you want to spend and how you want to maintain what you're putting up. So if you've ever wondered why VHF is keying out here where we live, you don't want to miss episode two.

It's going to be great. And I appreciate you guys listening. Can't wait to continue the conversation on Merz radios. Till next time. 73, y'all. God bless and we'll catch you on the next episode.