GMRS / FRS / HAM / MURS Communities

[WRVG593]

When it comes to communities... GMRS by far has the best. I've only seen pleasant and helpful people in the GMRS community. It's more easy going than Ham, MURS only has a few channels and basically no one in it, and FRS is basically incorporated into GMRS. The HAM community seems focused on keeping certain people out and creating contacts with people. Also the stereotype is there. Ham is very clipboard and khaki, where GMRS is jeans and TShirts. 

CB is a whole different world where basically anything goes. And as good and fun as it sounds, not as many people use it as they used to, and the equipment can be clunky. Murs dosent really have a community outside of farm use and hiking. 

Basically in my opinion, GMRS is a great middle ground between all the services, and has a community of people who care.

If anyone disagrees I would love to know why, just because I like listening to all forms of radio. 

[WRTT642]

LOL. Cant wait to see the responses to this one. This is gonna be fun.

I agree with you to a point. I am licensed for both amateur and GMRS and I use both quite a bit, some days one more than the other, and I can see what you are saying to an extent. I have made some great relationships with some really solid guys on ham and there are some really great people that are doing some really good work on expanding the capabilities of amateur radio, BUT with that being said I have been doing a lot of digital work lately and I can say that I have also came across some really, umm, how do I say this nicely, "sad hams" as they are so called. People who are angry for unknown reasons and are quick to "correct" you and have really bad attitudes for no apparent reason. I have also come across some guys that were clearly intoxicated and were a bit of a nuisance, but they usually get called out really quick by other more experienced guys.

GMRS is great are there are some really cool people on their as well, but I don't see the two being equivalent, they both are tools to use for the job that needs to be done. So far my experience with GMRS over the air has been fine and haven't had any issues with the few people I have come across on it, they have all been respectful and nice. So I think it is just a numbers game. You meet way more people over a greater distance on amateur than you do on GMRS. I can not speak on CB as I have never personally used it, but I have heard stories. 

Both are great, I have had more issues with people being "sad hams" on amateur than I have had issues over GMRS, but that simply is because I have talked to a lot more random people over ham than GMRS. I am sure there are jerks in GMRS too, I just haven't met them. Yet, lol. Thanks for the post.

[bd348]

GMRS on linked repeaters sometimes starts to sound like ham.

GMRS does have the offroad crowd adding to its overall popularity and the corresponding equipment demand, which is probably a good thing.  And Midland may not be everyone's favorite but at least they're bringing people in, and their everything-in-the-mike units sure are nice for many vehicles, although I wish they also had named channels and such.

 

[MichaelLAX]

The FCC keeps rejecting my application for a MURS license!  

[SteveShannon]

7 hours ago, WRVG593 said:

When it comes to communities... GMRS by far has the best. I've only seen pleasant and helpful people in the GMRS community. It's more easy going than Ham, MURS only has a few channels and basically no one in it, and FRS is basically incorporated into GMRS. The HAM community seems focused on keeping certain people out and creating contacts with people. Also the stereotype is there. Ham is very clipboard and khaki, where GMRS is jeans and TShirts. 

CB is a whole different world where basically anything goes. And as good and fun as it sounds, not as many people use it as they used to, and the equipment can be clunky. Murs dosent really have a community outside of farm use and hiking. 

Basically in my opinion, GMRS is a great middle ground between all the services, and has a community of people who care.

If anyone disagrees I would love to know why, just because I like listening to all forms of radio. 

In my area, there is no GMRS community; my time on this forum is my closest thing to a GMRS community.  There is a small community of hams and they’re completely different than the “clipboard and khakis“ crowd. I’ve found them to be very welcoming and easy going, but I also understand that may be different elsewhere.  I’ve never been a CB user, other than non-licensed walkie-talkies fifty years ago.

Find the group that you fit and enjoy.

[PACNWComms]

In the Pacific Northwest, pretty much every major city has GMRS repeaters, often linked via Internet, or some amateur group with a UHF repeater in use. UHF is virtually saturated, and 900 MHz ISM band radios even proliferated for a while to get away from the FRS/GMRS and commercial UHF crowd. It often hampers or assists in my testing of Radio over Internet Protocol kits I build for my employer, to be sent around the country to link sites to a "Global Security Operations Center" in a central location. 

Having amateur, GMRS and commercial licenses means that I am on several forums, to include this one. This forum has a nice welcome feel to it, but also some of the same issues other sites have.....one upmanship, and sometimes outright arguments, but also a great deal of information from people that actually use their equipment. In my own experience, I would rather see pictures posted o people using their gear, posting to forums, making contact with other users. On that note, local GMRS community and forums like this help a lot. Especially after the FCC changes to GMRS in 2017, more people have become licensed (and not having to take a test probably helps with this). The fact that an entire family can use the same call sign, cost of license (now anyway, I paid $70), and being valid for ten years, means GMRS and my local community has grown its footprint a bit. 

I agree that GMRS appears to be a middle ground between the chaos with AM CB and amateur radio, with a bit more inclusivity in forums and users within the community. A much larger radio related site I frequent often results in arguments about how some commercial gear should be set up, HAM radio "police" dictating the legality of everything, and an attitude that if you do not know as much as someone else, you should stay away. It should also be noted that many communities that have Community Emergency Response Teams (CERT), often begin their training with blister pack FRS/GMRS radios (pre-2017 style radios), which was a great introduction to radio use in emergencies and within their respective communities. 

[Lscott]

9 hours ago, WRVG593 said:

When it comes to communities... GMRS by far has the best. I've only seen pleasant and helpful people in the GMRS community. It's more easy going than Ham, MURS only has a few channels and basically no one in it, and FRS is basically incorporated into GMRS. The HAM community seems focused on keeping certain people out and creating contacts with people. Also the stereotype is there. Ham is very clipboard and khaki, where GMRS is jeans and TShirts. 

CB is a whole different world where basically anything goes. And as good and fun as it sounds, not as many people use it as they used to, and the equipment can be clunky. Murs dosent really have a community outside of farm use and hiking. 

Basically in my opinion, GMRS is a great middle ground between all the services, and has a community of people who care.

If anyone disagrees I would love to know why, just because I like listening to all forms of radio. 

I can understand why some people seem to be put off by Ham radio. It's more of a technical hobby and attracts these type of people. When you have a group like that it's inevitable there will be egos and attitudes on display. It seems to be associated often with people in technical areas. You should sit in some engineering design review meetings if you think the on air stuff is brutal! 

Hams are also very protective of their "turf". When you consider how much spectrum they have free access to and allowed power they have a lot to loose if the FCC gets a bug up their back side. That's not counting the commercial interests that look at Ham radio spectrum as "easy picking" when they petition the FCC for spectrum for their new service they want to roll out. It's basically a non stop assault. The ARRL even has a special spectrum defense fund, and people, dedicated to just this issue.

I agree with your point about GMRS being a middle ground.  It's low pressure and the only cost of entry is a cheap radio and $35 for the license. No tests, CW etc. thus nothing to brag about or try to use as a right of passage. Other than the frequent questions about antennas, coax and installation/programming issues one can "buy a box" and setup a functioning system fairly quickly. GMRS is far friendlier for non technical people to use. 

MURS isn't that popular since not many are aware of it and the lack of extensive equipment to use. Not having access to repeaters doesn't help either. I'm going to guess many people who do use it are employing old Part 90 VHF radios reprogrammed to meet the frequency and bandwidth requirements. I'll also wager those radios are running more than the allowed 2 watts, likely in the 5 watt range since that's typical for Part 90 VHF HT's.

CB radio seems to have gotten a bit better since the 70's and early 80's. Even so some people won't turn on the CB if they have their little kids in the car.  No licenses, no accountability and mostly no FCC enforcement are mainly responsible for the present state of CB radio. If people aren't careful GMRS could end up the same way.     

[WRVG593]

18 hours ago, bd348 said:

GMRS on linked repeaters sometimes starts to sound like ham.

GMRS does have the offroad crowd adding to its overall popularity and the corresponding equipment demand, which is probably a good thing.  And Midland may not be everyone's favorite but at least they're bringing people in, and their everything-in-the-mike units sure are nice for many vehicles, although I wish they also had named channels and such.

 

I kind of like there's no names repeaters. Although there's something that would be nice about a single travel/trucker channel 

[WRQC527]

If there was ever a place for the old Venn Diagrams we learned when we were kids, this would be the place. It would be fascinating to have everyone here draw their own  diagram of GMRS, Ham, FRS, CB and MURS.

[Lscott]

9 hours ago, WRQC527 said:

If there was ever a place for the old Venn Diagrams we learned when we were kids, this would be the place. It would be fascinating to have everyone here draw their own  diagram of GMRS, Ham, FRS, CB and MURS.

I would be right in the intersection of all of the circles. I haven't used CB in years. The last time was when I had to do a lot of business travel for the company and drove to customer sites. The van, I had at the time, looked like something out of the X-Files with the antennas on it. It was fun hearing the truckers on 19 make comments about it as I drove by.

I even had a guy driving in circles around it in a parking lot as I came out of a carry out pizza joint one day. Turned out it was a fellow Ham. He couldn't figure out what the small square horizontal loop was for. I explained it was for 2 meter sideband. At the time I had a Icom IC-706MKIIG rig in the van which did FM,AM and sideband on 6M, 2M and 70cm.

https://www.icomamerica.com/en/products/amateur/hf/706/specifications.aspx

https://www.m2inc.com/FG2MHOLOOP

[catbrigade]

Like anything, it's a mixed bag. The folks I've talked to on the local GMRS repeaters have all been pleasant. I got my ham license not long ago and discovered a good community there too locally. Many of the local GMRS users and the repeater owners also have ham licenses and I found out I work with quite a few hams as well. As for MURS, I don't think there is as much a community around it, but I found that it is useful for outdoor simplex comms in the woods away from town where you won't find the band busy with business users.

However, in the next town over there's a group running a bunch of linked repeaters on GMRS requiring paid membership and the impression I get from the outside is that they would put the sad hams to shame.