Would GMRS be better without FRS?

[WSIF574]

Just want an honest opinion. Not that the FCC is going to do anything. As I started my drive today I hit scan just to see what’s going on. As I left my neighborhood I heard construction workers. Get it to town. Then 3 or 4 channels of businesses taking. Once on the main highway I hear a gps giving directions and a radio playing with people talking, apparently I was close as it went on for miles probably a child playing with a bubble pack radio. Sure I could just stay on one channel and be rid of it 

So if it was up to you would you move the FRS frequencies off GMRS?

[beerftw]

No frs is what makes gmrs so good, you get more power and more options than frs, but you can still fully talk with frs which covers every easily available walmart or big box store radio sold.

 

  Gmrs benefits from numbers, seperating them just takes away most of the advantage of gmrs.

[RoadApple]

I agree with @beerftw.  Interoperability with unlicensed FRS is one of the things that is very handy during community events etc.  While your GMRS license covers your immediate family it does not cover your friends or other people you may need to communicate with. The ability hand someone a cheap no license required FRS radio and talk with them is IMHO a real plus!

And IF I don't want to hear miscellaneous FRS traffic, that is where CTCSS and DCS comes in... 

[WRZK526]

In event of emergencies people with FRS radio's can call out for help or receive my call out for help.  One way to stop it is put privacy codes for receive so your radio will not pick up problem channels.  

[SteveShannon]

3 hours ago, WSIF574 said:

Just want an honest opinion. Not that the FCC is going to do anything. As I started my drive today I hit scan just to see what’s going on. As I left my neighborhood I heard construction workers. Get it to town. Then 3 or 4 channels of businesses taking. Once on the main highway I hear a gps giving directions and a radio playing with people talking, apparently I was close as it went on for miles probably a child playing with a bubble pack radio. Sure I could just stay on one channel and be rid of it 

So if it was up to you would you move the FRS frequencies off GMRS?

No. 

[amaff]

No.

[gortex2]

From one who has used GMRS for over 40 years yes. Before bubble packs and CCR GRMS was a great service for those who wanted a repeater or channels to talk to family. Rarely did it get used for friends but sometimes local farmers would share a resource. Repeaters were still costly, equipment was still costly but it was as close to a private service as you could get without the process to get a business license. For us living in the NE over line a this was the only feasable service you could pay the FCC and get a license quickly. We only had 2 frequencies on our license but lets face it our first radios were xstal and those cost. 

Luckily where I am now is not super busy on GMRS but I still hear hunters every now and then. Most of them are still on the ham bads so with any luck they stay there. 

 

[WSLH454]

There should be two distinct bands...one for GMRS & one for FRS. I'm out in the countryside with some farms and single family homes. FRS might reach a mile to mile and a half. Unless you're hiking in the woods its useless here. I'm guessing I might find a family member in Walmart with FRS and that's about it lol. With GMRS at least I've got 5 watts or so, and can at least reach someone in an emergency. Using a repeater if I'm stuck in the snow on a back road I might be able to call for help. Honestly I've not heard anyone on FRS near me and not a lot on GMRS. If I've got a GMRS radio and say we're traveling with folks that have FRS radios, they might hear me but I won't hear them as it is now. I'm just hoping GMRS doesn't end up like CB has. I'm also hoping GMRS stays user friendly and not uptight like some other bands

[SteveShannon]

5 minutes ago, WSLH454 said:

There should be two distinct bands...one for GMRS & one for FRS. I'm out in the countryside with some farms and single family homes. FRS might reach a mile to mile and a half. Unless you're hiking in the woods its useless here. I'm guessing I might find a family member in Walmart with FRS and that's about it lol. With GMRS at least I've got 5 watts or so, and can at least reach someone in an emergency. Using a repeater if I'm stuck in the snow on a back road I might be able to call for help. Honestly I've not heard anyone on FRS near me and not a lot on GMRS. If I've got a GMRS radio and say we're traveling with folks that have FRS radios, they might hear me but I won't hear them as it is now. I'm just hoping GMRS doesn't end up like CB has. I'm also hoping GMRS stays user friendly and not uptight like some other bands

I’d be very curious if you see how much difference in simplex range exists between 2 watts and 5 watts.  The conventional wisdom is that the thing that absolutely limits range for UHF is line of sight, not RF output power. I’ve had a friend turn the power way down on his 2 meter radio and still be able to hit our repeater at 80 miles.

[WSLH454]

3 minutes ago, SteveShannon said:

I’d be very curious if you see how much difference in simplex range exists between 2 watts and 5 watts.  The conventional wisdom is that the thing that absolutely limits range for UHF is line of sight, not RF output power. I’ve had a friend turn the power way down on his 2 meter radio and still be able to hit our repeater at 80 miles.

I'm going to do a test this week...Radioddity FRS, against my Radioddity GM 30 GMRS radios on simplex. I had one FRS in the house, the other one was in the car with me. I had an ok signal at 1 mile, after that no signal at all. Just houses and trees, no big buildings out here. We live up on a hill, and if I stood on the roof of the house, I could almost see a mile away. We've got lots of trees out here though. I'll have to do a test with the GM 30 radios this week when I'm out and about. 5 watts might make a bit of a difference

[SteveShannon]

18 minutes ago, WSLH454 said:

I'm going to do a test this week...Radioddity FRS, against my Radioddity GM 30 GMRS radios on simplex. I had one FRS in the house, the other one was in the car with me. I had an ok signal at 1 mile, after that no signal at all. Just houses and trees, no big buildings out here. We live up on a hill, and if I stood on the roof of the house, I could almost see a mile away. We've got lots of trees out here though. I'll have to do a test with the GM 30 radios this week when I'm out and about. 5 watts might make a bit of a difference

Keep in mind also that channels 8-14 are only 500 milliwatts for both FRS and GMRS. 

[Lscott]

12 minutes ago, WSLH454 said:

I'm going to do a test this week...R

It would be a better test to use the same exact radio for the tests and just change the bandwidth and power between GMRS and FRS.

The results could be heavily influenced by the quality of the radio's transmitter and receiver if using two different models.

I once checked a cheap Motorola FRS radio on my bench frequency counter. I was shocked to see it was off frequency by about 2KHz plus! Considering the bandwidth is only 12.5KHz on FRS that's a huge error. Most of my commercial radios, TK-3170 for example, is spec'd at +/-2.5PPM from -22F to +140F, so at 462MHz that's an error of 1.155KHz over that temperature range. The digital radios are even tighter. The NX-1300DUK5 is spec'd at +/-0.5PPM from -30C to +60C.

[Northcutt114]

45 minutes ago, SteveShannon said:

The conventional wisdom is that the thing that absolutely limits range for UHF is line of sight, not RF output power. I’ve had a friend turn the power way down on his 2 meter radio and still be able to hit our repeater at 80 miles.

This is accurate. I have a 5w handheld that - on low - can TX @ 1.5w. I'm able to hit a repeater 60 miles away on that setting.

 

[amaff]

25 minutes ago, Northcutt114 said:

This is accurate. I have a 5w handheld that - on low - can TX @ 1.5w. I'm able to hit a repeater 60 miles away on that setting.

 

Half a watt for mine, and 70 mile distance to the repeater. It's definitely a thing. Power helps punch through obstacles a bit, but LOS > *

[WSLH454]

58 minutes ago, Lscott said:

It would be a better test to use the same exact radio for the tests and just change the bandwidth and power between GMRS and FRS.

The results could be heavily influenced by the quality of the radio's transmitter and receiver if using two different models.

I once checked a cheap Motorola FRS radio on my bench frequency counter. I was shocked to see it was off frequency by about 2KHz plus! Considering the bandwidth is only 12.5KHz on FRS that's a huge error. Most of my commercial radios, TK-3170 for example, is spec'd at +/-2.5PPM from -22F to +140F, so at 462MHz that's an error of 1.155KHz over that temperature range. The digital radios are even tighter. The NX-1300DUK5 is spec'd at +/-0.5PPM from -30C to +60C.

 just change the bandwidth and power between GMRS and FRS. Yeah I like your idea better I'll give that a try

[GreggInFL]

1 hour ago, amaff said:

Power helps punch through obstacles a bit, but LOS > *

Power helps if you have no LOS to speak of. Before I became interested in GMRS I tried FRS radios in our neighborhood, which is flat with thick foliage. Range was, maybe, 1/4 mile. A GMRS HT will do a ~mile.

But yeah, at the end of the day, elevation = propagation.

[dosw]

4 hours ago, amaff said:

Half a watt for mine, and 70 mile distance to the repeater. It's definitely a thing. Power helps punch through obstacles a bit, but LOS > *

Here's the occasional reminder that 70cm is used to reach the ISS 263 miles up in the sky, and often at orbits that place it 1000 miles away, while still within line of sight. And the radios people are using? 5w handhelds with a Yagi antenna, often, as that is the easiest to deal with out in the field.

2w to go 80 miles is totally sufficient if there's line of sight, no obstructions, just like 5w is sufficient for hitting the ISS repeater 250-1000 miles away.

<edit, adding to my post>

....in fact, Voyager 1, the most distant man-made object in space, nearly a full light-day away, transmits at 23 watts:

Quote

 

Voyager 1 transmits data to Earth using a 3.7-meter high-gain antenna, primarily utilizing the

• X-band frequency of ~8.4 GHz
• (specifically around 8420.43 MHz) for science and engineering data, with a transmitter power of roughly 23 Watts.
• An S-band frequency of ~2.3 GHz is also available, though generally unused since planetary encounters. 
• Frequency: Primarily X-band (~8.4 GHz), with S-band (~2.3 GHz) capability.
• Power: Approximately 23 Watts.
• Data Rates: The X-band downlink provides data at rates up to 7.2 kilobits per second.
• Signal Strength:
  • Due to the extreme distance (over 15 billion miles), the signal received on Earth is less than 1 attowatt
  • (10e-18, or 10 to the negative 18 power, Watts).

 

 

[WSKU631]

The strength of GMRS is its capacity to interact with a broad base of the community (FRS) for community events and for emergencies. FRS->GMRS->HAM-> EOC.

[kirk5056]

If you are concerned about unlicensed people being able to legally use the frequency that you are using then you may need a different radio service.  We only have 30 of the thousands of frequencies out there.  If one radio service does not meet you needs there are several others.

[TerriKennedy]

Many of the blister pack radios come preprogrammed with various tones and don't necessarily even use the same channel numbering (often the channels above 22 just have different tones and claim "privacy"). So anyone with a FRS radio hoping to obtain emergency assistance from a GMRS licensee is likely to be disappointed - even if we're monitoring without a tone selected, they likely won't hear our reply because we're not sending whatever tone their radio is checking for.

[WRZK526]

9 hours ago, TerriKennedy said:

Many of the blister pack radios come preprogrammed with various tones and don't necessarily even use the same channel numbering (often the channels above 22 just have different tones and claim "privacy"). So anyone with a FRS radio hoping to obtain emergency assistance from a GMRS licensee is likely to be disappointed - even if we're monitoring without a tone selected, they likely won't hear our reply because we're not sending whatever tone their radio is checking for.

I think most people that buy those "blister pack radios" have no intention of using them for emergencies. And you know a lot of ham snobs consider all GMRS radio's to be "blister pack radios" even the ones that can connect to repeaters. But then they program their Chinese radio's so they can access the GMRS repeaters. Given the very short range of the "blister pack radios" if I got a emergency request from anyone I would assume it is a close neighbor I would render assistance if possible. 

I also rarely respond to anyone who doesn't have a valid GMRS call sign. 

[Lscott]

13 hours ago, WRZK526 said:

I think most people that buy those "blister pack radios" have no intention of using them for emergencies.

And spend the rest of the time in a desk drawer or on the closet shelf. When they do get used it’s at a park with the kids, camping, hiking or traveling in a small vehicle caravan for a trip.

[WRZK526]

19 minutes ago, Lscott said:

And spend the rest of the time in a desk drawer or on the closet shelf. When they do get used it’s at a park with the kids, camping, hiking or traveling in a small vehicle caravan for a trip.

I remember doing that with my kids before I ever got involved with GMRS. Totally different thing. I found a couple of them in a drawer a while back, one of them still works and I can connect with it from my GMRS radio's after I put batteries in it. I am sure current and future radio users got and will get their start using these cheap ones. 

[WROQ359]

Personally for me I don't care. I know some licensed GMRS users get butt hurt when some unknowning new user uses a GMRS channel without a license. Most people go into Wallmart or some other store buy the radio and start talking without knowledge of the difference in channels. I have heard people using the GMRS channels like FRS, and I just let them be. I think the FRS/GMRS channels are a great asset to the community for the ease of use and ability to get on the air with your family friends or whatever group you are with. Where I live there is zero activity on either GMRS or FRS other than once in a great while kids playing with the toy radios. More activity in the larger cities and more grumbling about non-licensed users. I would have liked to seen MURS included in the FRS channels (dual band radios) just to give everyone more options without having to buy a second radio for 5 channels. With that being said I think there are probably more people using GMRS/FRS/MURS using a Baofeng UV-5R (or some other variant) than there are users using the proper FCC certified radios. 

[amaff]

3 hours ago, WROQ359 said:

Personally for me I don't care. I know some licensed GMRS users get butt hurt when some unknowning new user uses a GMRS channel without a license. Most people go into Wallmart or some other store buy the radio and start talking without knowledge of the difference in channels.

Is it because those people don't realize that there is no such thing as simplex "GMRS channels" and "FRS channels" because all 22 are shared? 
(ok, there are ERP and bandwidth difference, but the frequencies are all the same)