So who here uses GMRS properly?

[Jaay]

Me, Me, Me !

[ULTRA2]

On 2/9/2025 at 7:41 PM, SteveShannon said:

Nothing is gained by having silent channels.

I totally agree with this comment you have 8 Channels and most of them is very quiet there are times people drives through and uses it to communicate with other groups that there with that's what these frequencies are for communications!!! I monitor 700 (CH 21) and I hear traffic 

[nokones]

When I travel, I monitor all 15 GMRS 462 (main and interstitial) channels. I do not monitor the 467 channels. Also, I program all the repeaters channels as presets for the areas I intend to travel through for the just in case. I've had a GMRS license since the mid 90s and as of this date, I have only on a couple of occasions had the just in case situations to report a serious traffic collision when there was no cellular telephone coverage.

I have never heard any trucker traffic, or at least I couldn't identify any trucker traffic because no one was talking about their Jake Brakes or putting out smokey reports or asking if the coup is open. I have never had engaged in any exchange of radio traffic anyone while traveling. Most of the simplex traffic appears to be FRS for a very brief period of time as you are within range. In the larger population centers there appears to be a lot of traffic on the various repeaters for the area.

Essentially, most of my radio communication use is when traveling or wheeling with groups and it is usually on GMRS simplex. If it is my private travel group, we will communicate on either VHF or UHF Business Radio Service freqs.

[WRYS709]

2 hours ago, nokones said:

When I travel... I have only on a couple of occasions had the just in case situations to report a serious traffic collision when there was no cellular telephone coverage.

T-Mobile Starlink Satellite support

[WRTC928]

I rarely use GMRS simply because I rarely have any occasion to do so. I don't have any family in the immediate area, I don't participate in an off-roading group, and when I travel, it's usually just me. If I were traveling in a convoy with family, I'd give them radios, but it hasn't come up. I do use ham repeaters when I travel just to alleviate the boredom. There's usually someone willing to have a chat with a stranger passing through.

[Lscott]

5 hours ago, nokones said:

If it is my private travel group, we will communicate on either VHF or UHF Business Radio Service freqs.

How did you qualify for a business frequency? Is your travel group a registered business, or one of the other special categories mentioned by the FCC?

I occasionally read mention of people using business frequencies for "personal use" but I never see how one can qualify under the FCC rules to get one.

[OffRoaderX]

30 minutes ago, Lscott said:

How did you qualify for a business frequency? Is your travel group a registered business, or one of the other special categories mentioned by the FCC?

It's very easy - you just state your intended "business use" on the form.  It seems they are more interested in taking your money than confirming what you will be doing.

[LeoG]

Sounds like govt.  And after they cash the check then maybe they'll complain about your intent.

[Davichko5650]

12 minutes ago, OffRoaderX said:

It's very easy - you just state your intended "business use" on the form.  It seems they are more interested in taking your money than confirming what you will be doing.

I can see Randy writing in "Nunya"  on the form!

[Davichko5650]

On 2/9/2025 at 7:41 PM, SvenMarbles said:

. Not for yelling "WHISKEY SIERRA ALFA TANGO 423 Monitoring!". For people with some other stated goal and using radio as an aid, and not just "being on the radio".

Functional use..

 

 

Agree!  I can count on half of one hand the number of times I've used the repeaters in my area.  I got into GMRS in 2017 (cue the "I've been a H.A.M. for (years") and at the time was not active as an Amateur Operator, although licensed. I got it for using in Northern MN where, at the time, there was zero cell phone coverage. Used to talk from Cabin to boat and back, to talk mobile to cabin and around the resort area.  Current usage is that, as well as on off road trips, solo or group, around the house (beats yelling) and with a small group of friends in the neighborhood to chat on occasion on simplex. On the amateur side of radio, got back into that in 2020 and about 99% of activity there is on HF, and most of that on digital modes. Talk all day at work on two-ways, so like to chat via keyboards to those random strangers Randy warned us all about!

If you're getting into GMRS as a "gateway" or "Ham Lite", it's not really where it's at.  OTOH, not my place to tell people what to do, so those that do, it's their choice.

[quarterwave]

I've been licensed for 30 years. Had a repeater about that long. Back in the day, no one around here had even heard of GMRS let alone have a radio or use it. We used them for the farm. 

Several years ago I opened my repeater for public use, and let it fly. Had couple of guys get on now and then. Some silly stuff went on. It basically wasn't being utilized to an extent that it met the value of time and expense I put in it. 

I sold the repeater last Fall. Really don't use my radios much. There are more people around here with them now, but nothing very organized as far as groups or people using them for a purpose. Casual BS now and then, and a lot of monkeying around. A few farms - that's probably the most productive and practical use for them here. 

 

[Socalgmrs]

I use it off roading,!horse back riding, fire evacuations, cell phone down times, riding quads and hiking.   Many of the local clubs talk for hours about adios and antennas.  One guy as like 10 antennas for 1 hand held radio and he tests them every week.  One guy asks what time it is every 30min or so.  Another group chit chats at 4am.   This not so much a hobby as a way to communicate while doing a hobby.  I have way better things to do then chit chat about radios on a radio. 

[nokones]

6 hours ago, Lscott said:

How did you qualify for a business frequency? Is your travel group a registered business, or one of the other special categories mentioned by the FCC?

I occasionally read mention of people using business frequencies for "personal use" but I never see how one can qualify under the FCC rules to get one.

Back in the 90s, my car racing activities qualified the use of the Business Radio Service freqs and GMRS was not the appropriate radio service for those activities.

[kirk5056]

I use GMRS/FRS mostly to communicate with people in my groups.  Jeep, hunting and golf carts around the lake I live on.  A mix of GMRS and FRS in most of those groups.  

I think the best day on GMRS/FRS is being able to communicate with those people that I want to communicate with and NOT hearing anything else.

Having said that it could be nice to have a channel to "call" (like Star Trek's hailing channel) but I would hate for something like that to become CB 19.  I hear hams using what they list as "call" channels, but even they just use them as conversation, rag-chew etc so I would never monitor anything like that.

[TerriKennedy]

9 hours ago, Socalgmrs said:

I use it off roading,!horse back riding, fire evacuations, cell phone down times, riding quads and hiking.   Many of the local clubs talk for hours about adios and antennas.  One guy as like 10 antennas for 1 hand held radio and he tests them every week.  One guy asks what time it is every 30min or so.  Another group chit chats at 4am.   This not so much a hobby as a way to communicate while doing a hobby.  I have way better things to do then chit chat about radios on a radio. 

I use it above ground to talk to family and other GMRS license holders. Underground (mine exploring) I use it to communicate with others in my exploring group. I have a parrot I set up in the shaft when underground, and it does ID with my call sign at the required intervals. Not that any signals are making it out very far from inside a lead mine.

Occasionally I'll hear someone announce their call sign requesting a radio check on the channel I monitor, and I will answer those in kind. It's mostly quiet here except when a local taxi company uses the channel in their rotating "frequency of the day". There are a few repeaters that are barely in range, one of which does some sort of chime thing and announces the time with ~58 minutes of error. I assume that this is a repeater that hasn't been reset since DST ended for the year, along with accumulated clock drift. I guess nobody using it knows the repeater owner, and the owner isn't monitoring. There are a few (possibly including the one I mentioned above) that Morse their IDs. They barely break squelch most of the time and cut in and out, so I haven't been able to copy their full IDs.

[WRTC928]

12 hours ago, kirk5056 said:

Having said that it could be nice to have a channel to "call" (like Star Trek's hailing channel) but I would hate for something like that to become CB 19.  I hear hams using what they list as "call" channels, but even they just use them as conversation, rag-chew etc so I would never monitor anything like that.

The concept behind the "calling" frequency actually is a bit like the Star Trek "hailing" frequency. The idea is that you go to that frequency to make a contact and then change to a different frequency to have your conversation. However, I do hear people having protracted conversations on the calling frequency. To be fair, I almost never hear any other traffic on those frequencies, so maybe it doesn't matter much that they're gabbing about their gardens. It may be different in some other areas. A lot of the purpose of the calling frequencies may have been obviated by cell phones. I didn't have a ham license back then, but it's my understanding that they got used quite a bit for people stranded on the road, etc. I don't know how many hams routinely monitor calling frequencies, but I do. 

Historically, ch 19 on CB has been and is used as a "trucker" frequency and it got the most traffic, hence was the one people always monitored. CB became popular long before dual-monitor radios were a thing, so you could monitor either the channel everyone was using or the "calling" channel. Obviously, most people chose the popular channel, so a calling channel just never became a thing. It would actually seem to make sense in CB since you have 38 (excluding ch 9) other channels you could switch to after making contact. Ch 9 historically was monitored by emergency services agencies and perhaps still is. I don't know whether a calling channel for GMRS would ever take off simply because anyone who might want to hear from a stranger is probably already scanning all the GMRS channels anyway. It still makes a little sense for amateur radio because there are literally thousands of frequencies available, but for CB and GMRS, technology has made calling frequencies obsolescent, if not entirely obsolete.

[GrouserPad]

I drive truck a few times a month.  (Think CDL Kenworth t880’s mostly) I spent 12 hrs with my ht on scan during a day trucking in and around my capital city and I constantly hollered on ch20 and ch19 gmrs. No one is monitoring these channels. The only activity I got all day was when I passed construction sites where they were using frs to com with crane or equipment operators and laborers. Cb had all kinds of trucker chatter and useful reports. Overheard some locals chatting on a non gmrs frequency that the local gmrs repeater has gone down in use a lot in the last 4 years. Kinda bummer. But at the same time might be better for me as I only use it for my family coms and for that less random radio traffic is better. 

[WRUU653]

7 hours ago, TerriKennedy said:

one of which does some sort of chime thing and announces the time with ~58 minutes of error. 
 

perhaps the repeater is in a time warp and you can call people in the past.

[GreggInFL]

Road trips with multiple vehicles and outdoor activities with friends.  The value of radios when out of cell range is obvious, but I'm always amused when the "just use a cell phone" crowd realizes the radios free up the cell phones for other uses.  Plus, texting in a car is not easy, and who wants to set up a conference call when there are 3+ users?

[WSHB846]

Me and the fam go deep within North Cascades/Diablo Lake/Ross Lake, Olympic, Mt. Baker/Snoqualmie Forest, etc. fairly often and have been using just FRS+InReach the past few years. We haven't had anything scary happen, thank goodness, but this summer I plan on leaving a RT97S on battery+solar at a base camp (park rules/etc. permitting) to really extend our range. Sure we could text InReach-to-InReach but I'd rather save those for true SOS/emergency needs, besides it being expensive. Otherwise for more day-to-day stuff local drives or walks around the property have spotty cell coverage at best. Have already got the household accustomed to simplex etiquette and we're already liking the upgrade from FRS to GMRS a lot!

[amaff]

1 hour ago, GreggInFL said:

Road trips with multiple vehicles and outdoor activities with friends.  The value of radios when out of cell range is obvious, but I'm always amused when the "just use a cell phone" crowd realizes the radios free up the cell phones for other uses.  Plus, texting in a car is not easy, and who wants to set up a conference call when there are 3+ users?

Yep, same. Did a big road trip this summer with a bunch of family in the western US. There's LOTS of area with zero cell coverage.

[Imply4907]

There's a very accessible repeater in my area which occasionally the users get a little long-winded. But everyone's friendly and generally respectful. They use their call signs. Good order. I also get to use the nice repeater for free!

When using repeaters, I do use my call sign often and try to be on the brief side of my transmissions.

On simplex, with my family, I tend to be a little more loose with the call sign rules. Some of them are using FRS radios. I'm using the interstitial narrow band channels of the frequency. Fortunately, my area's not too crowded with FRS/GMRS.

Add: I've noticed areas like Mooresville (I-77) and Charlotte (I-77, I-85, etc.), the GMRS/FRS frequencies are much more used.

Edited February 12 by Imply4907
added experiential comment about usage

[Socalgmrs]

I’ll also add “some people” also use it as a way to make videos beating up on people, making fun of people, and generally being a pain in the world of gmrs for the sole reason of making money because no other skills exist.  
 

And then there are the clubs that want to be ham but the people running said clubs can’t or won’t get there ham licenses so they slap down 10s of thousands of dollars to slap up huge 100w repeaters on commercial towers then charge big money to be part of the club that then encourages it’s users to talk 24/7 on 3 of the pairs in a very busy metropolitan area.  these clubs call the gmrs radio service a hobby and only want people in the clubs that have money to spend on high end radios.  

[GrouserPad]

7 hours ago, WSHB846 said:

Me and the fam go deep within North Cascades/Diablo Lake/Ross Lake, Olympic, Mt. Baker/Snoqualmie Forest, etc. fairly often and have been using just FRS+InReach the past few years. We haven't had anything scary happen, thank goodness, but this summer I plan on leaving a RT97S on battery+solar at a base camp (park rules/etc. permitting) to really extend our range. Sure we could text InReach-to-InReach but I'd rather save those for true SOS/emergency needs, besides it being expensive. Otherwise for more day-to-day stuff local drives or walks around the property have spotty cell coverage at best. Have already got the household accustomed to simplex etiquette and we're already liking the upgrade from FRS to GMRS a lot!

Heck yeh man. I worked at mt baker when they broke the world record for the most snowfall at a ski area in world. Baker is so sick. Artist point. 542. One of the heavy equip operators got drunk one night, drove his 4Runner off the side of 542, stole the loader at 2 am which had square V log chains on it, and ran it down the highway to pull his runner out.  The state police were looking for him the next day. Did thousands upon thousands of dollars of damage to the asphalt.  Place was absolutely wild. Baker is unlike anywhere I’ve ever been. Pure magical in the wintertime. This was before cell phones. The only comms I had when I was there was by letter mail. 

[WRYZ926]

Breaker 1 9, breaker 1 9, rubber duck, do you have your ears on. come back. 

I use GMRS properly to call family and friends on simplex. And I also will just call out on our repeater to see who is listening. It is usually the same family and friends on the repeater that I talk to on simplex. We do get occasional new people on the repeater that are traveling through the area and I try to answer them back too.