Prep Comms - What is FRS and Why It Matters

Episode Date: August 19, 2025

In 1996, the FCC created the Family Radio Service (FRS) to give everyday families a simple, free, and legal way to stay connected. You’ve probably seen these radios before — blister packs on the shelves at Walmart, Bass Pro, or Target promising 30 miles of range. The truth? They don’t go nearly that far, but they’ve kept families connected for decades. In this first episode of our FRS Mini-Series, Caleb Nelson (K4CDN) shares: The history of FRS and why the FCC gave it to the public How blister-pack walkie talkies became household items in the 90s and 2000s The real strengths of FRS (simple, free, license-free) The real limits (range, fixed antennas, crowded channels) Why FRS still matters in your family’s communication plan today Whether you’ve already got a set sitting in a drawer or you’re new to radios, this episode will help you see FRS in a whole new light. --Mentioned in this episode: BTECH FRS-A1: https://amzn.to/3UTnjgK Family Connect System: https://www.familyconnectsystem.com Listen, learn, and share this with someone who still thinks those blister-pack radios can go 35 miles.

It is the prepcoms podcast. I'm your host, Caleb Nelson, K4 CDN. Thank you for dropping by spending time with us here. And, of course, sharing the program with your friends. Hope you guys are having a fantastic day. just finished up the MERS series. Hope you guys enjoyed that. Apparently you did.

I got a lot of feedback on that. All of it was good, by the way, and thank you. I always appreciate your reviewing and sharing the show. So I appreciate you being here on whatever platform you're enjoying the program on. Again, I'm Caleb, and I just love radios. I love sharing the ins and outs and the how-toes, especially for families who are trying to build communications plans, alternative plans for their family as a data of five. that's kind of important to me.

So I want to continue with one of the radios that you see everywhere. And it's called an FRS radio. Family Radio Service. There's your FRS. So, you know, you see them in Walmart Bass Pro Target. Everywhere you go, Dollar General sells them. I mean, anywhere you go, you see these little radios, usually bright colors so that you won't lose them.

Maybe your kids can keep up with them a little better. They're usually in blister packs, meaning they're packaged. in plastic. And they'll say like, you know, nine million miles range, talk from here to the moon and back to your grandma in the afterlife or something. They make all these outrageous claims on their, it sounds like one of those advertisers on Facebook. I need to stop. But they say they can talk all over the place and they're real tiny and they have this little bit short stubby antenna. And they're usually right there with the flashlights, the batteries, the weather radios, which I hope you have, and things like that. So that's FRS, family

radio service. Again, you know, you know my story. I was into radio my whole life as a kid, especially. I got started. And then in the 1990s, mid-1990s, I got serious with a girl who's now my wife of 26 years. Her name's Carla. She's amazing. And one of the things I remember buying with her at Sam's Club was a set of FRS radios. Now, these things were $99. Okay. They didn't even come with the batteries. I think I've still got the box somewhere, but they were, they were smaller than a man's hand, and they were $99 for the set. And it's not that you saw them everywhere back then. I mean, this was like 97, 98, maybe 99 somewhere in there, probably right there on the Y2K push, and 99 bucks for two general electric little walkie-talkies. And they operated, I believe, on three AA batteries. And man, I tell you, we had portable CB radios that we would use in our cars from time to time, along with our next tails back then, but I mean, this was incredible because it wasn't a bunch of squelch and it wasn't a bunch of truckers. It was just, you press the button and the guy on the other end can hear

as long as you were within reasonable distance and, you know, not really paying attention to everything like I do now back then. I thought it was a really great deal for 99 bucks to get that kind of radio. So I bought a set, of course. My father-in-law bought a set. And we would use them in place of our portable handheld CB radio walkie-talkies when we traveled and whatnot. And I loved them because, you know, not a lot of squelch, not a lot of noise, just a lot of fun. And I didn't know this part that in 1996, which is like right around the time that I bought these radios, and that's why you didn't see them everywhere because it was brand new. In 96, the FCC carved out 14 frequencies on the UHF spectrum and gave it to us serfs.

They took it away from the business band and gave it to the U.S. citizenry. But it's got rules. You know, this government has got rules. Low power, very low power, fixed antennas, meaning that you can't unscrew the antenna and put a better antenna on there. Also, there's no license required. So just like MERS, it's got rules. Some of them are easier to follow. Some of them are not.

But the no license required, everybody loved that. And this was kind of one of the first times that the FCC, you know, decided to say, hey, we're going to make these for family use. Now, a lot of businesses picked them up. Don't get me wrong there. But it was kind of sold to the populace as, hey, we have all these frequencies. And we're going to give you 14 of them that you can use on these really little small, low-powered, underpowered, vastly underpowered radios to talk to your family. And so if you're young, like if you're under the age of 35, you probably don't remember the time. You probably don't remember the when your cell phone bill had minutes on it, meaning that you could talk a certain amount

of minutes, but if you went over those minutes, you paid extra. Or maybe you left town and didn't have a roaming plan and had to use your phone as an emergency, and they charged you out the nose for that. So, oh, texting? Yeah, that was free, and then they started charging you per text, and then everything now is unlimited. So this was all before that, right? So to hand a young family And their in-laws, a set of walkie-talkies that they could use going up the road without big antennas on their cars and huge radios, you know, the size of a Stanley water bottle cup, whatever you call those things. And having to listen to the truckers all the way, people got excited. And people were ruling the pay just like I was $99 for a set of these things that would talk across the yard. But they were great.

They were FM. It was a lot of fun. So in the 90s, the cell phones were so expensive. and you know times are changing dad has a phone for work that stays in his car but what about little johnny little johnny wants to go over the neighbor's house but you know his parents are at home so if we get little johnny one of these walkie talkies he can talk to his buddies and his mom so that's kind of how this thing was sold to the populace hikers campers bicyclists parents everybody schools everybody picked these things up and it took off i mean it took off i mean it took off like crazy. And by the early 2000s, they were everywhere. Like everybody had them. You probably had a couple of sets. And still today, they're literally one of the most common radios that you can buy. And families have them already. You already own these things. And they're probably sitting in a drawer somewhere with batteries that are dead. That's generally

how it goes. Matter of fact, I got to throw this in there. I have a set that you can actually wear it as a wristwatch. And back in the day, when I was riding motorcycles before I had children. We would use those. And of course, I had it all wired up. But yeah, earpiece and a push to talk and all this through a watch. I need to take a picture and put them on, maybe not this show, but I'll put them up there. FRS watch radios. Really cool, really cool stuff. So here's the truth. FRS radio was built to give families a free, simple way to talk. It was there for them to have something to use instead of the old C-Bs as we were moving into the 21st century. They were great everywhere, everywhere, all day, every day, as long as you're within range.

If you're not, you're not going to talk to somebody. You're going to get a bunch of static. It will not talk 35 miles unless you're on one plateau and say Arizona and your buddies on another plateau. And you can kind of see each other and the curvature of the flat earth doesn't get in the way for you to be able to talk. That's about the only way it's going to go there. They're UHF.

So they're going to work okay in the woods. They're going to work better in town, of course. They're going to work great inside of Walmart, inside an academy sports, at the mall. At a school, a lot of daycares and whatnot use these things for years. So they're family radios, but it doesn't mean that they don't get used out here in the general populace with business and whatever. Now, that said, there's another radio service that's based upon this. We're going to talk about it next. I'm sure you've heard about it.

GMRS, but we're going to talk about the ends and outs of the family radio service first as we build this library about communications for families and people who are trying to build alternate communication systems. Do you need an FRS radio? Yes. Yeah, I think you do. Why? Well, you can hand them to anybody and as long as the batteries are charged, the kids can play in the yard, you can go to the park, you can go to the theme park, whatever, and generally stay connected with everybody. Now, there's a lot of traffic on there. People can hear you. There's no privacy or anything like that, but they're cheap nowadays, especially. And, you know, for like handout radios, you can't beat them. And what's wrong with having that? I can go on about everybody having a radio

and I won't. But here's the thing. They're legal to use. They're very low power. The antennas can't be replaced. There's no like antenna restrictions on heights, because you can't disconnect the antenna that's built there from the factory. It's legal. It's simple. I mean, it's a kiss radio for real. And really, sometimes that's all you need. You don't have to spend gobs of money. I will tell you that I've got some friends who use these and we'll talk about it next show, but they have been really performing well for them and what they're doing with them. So here's the thing. If you don't have anything, this beats nothing. Is it as good as MERS? I don't personally think so. Is it easier to buy and equip your family with? Yes, absolutely,

because you can go to Walmart, click on the link here in Amazon, and have them in your house, you know, in a couple of hours, depending on where you live. So they're a lot cheaper than MERS, and there's so many out there, but they're hard to beat, and they work really well for what they do. I loved hours back in the 1990s. Still have them, still have the box somewhere, and hopefully we'll find that to get a picture. up here on the program. Either way, that doesn't matter. What does matter you're here, you're listening and you're learning. So we're just touching FRS. We're going to dig into it a little bit deeper next time as we continue to talk about the service itself. Was it used for

what can you do with it? And is there any value? Yes, I believe there is. So I'm going to go. Quick show in and out. But I want to say thank you for being here with us. The prepcom's podcast is brought to you by the Family Connect system. It is a webinar this upcoming as we are finalizing a post-production here, and you can find out information in our show notes. That's me. It's our show sponsor, and it's a free webinar for you to learn about how to create a, I don't say bulletproof. That doesn't sound good, but how to create a solid communications, emergency communications

planning for your family, and that's coming really soon. You can sign up and get pre-registered on the website. Guys, thank you so much for listening. I really enjoy creating this. Thank you for sharing it with your friends. I love the reviews. They're amazing. If you're bored, you want to write one, as long as it's great, you know, just feel free.

I'm just kidding. You guys have a great one. We'll catch it with you next time. God bless you, 73. Thank you.