Monitoring, Calling, and other General Questions for GMRS Users.

[Dave_Collins]

Had a few questions to throw out there to get the brains working:

You're driving down the road, not on a convoy or on a planned trip. Do you routinely monitor GMRS channels to see if anyone is calling (the same way a HAM would monitor a calling band or an old trucker would listen to Channel 19)? If so, what channel are you listening to?

Now lets say you are on a casual day trip to a local beach for Surfasting or sun bathing.. do you have the radio on to monitor for other off-roaders who may need assistance, guidance or advice? What channel are you listing to primarily?

If you were see a decal on another vehicle that seemed to indicate that they may be monitoring a certain channel (example chan 4) would you be likely to pick up your radio and make a call out?

I tend to drive with my mounted gmrs turned on at all times, but other then the local GMRS repeater channel, there aren't many people to talk to and all the people on the repeater seem to do is spill their life story. I like to keep it on when Im in the woods or at the beach and usually keep it tuned to channel 4.

Any thoughts or options are welcome

 

[smritte]

My life in radio started in the early 70's with CB. Channel 19 was always the "truckers" channel with Channel 9 being monitored for emergencies. Later I got my ham license and eventually ended up just using ham for off road trips. I never really paid attention to GMRS. I started to go to off road events in the middle 80's and it was almost exclusively CB. That lasted until the late 90's when more people started to get ham licenses. GMRS didn't really get popular until around COVID when the Overland fad was in full swing. That's when I finally bought one.
With all that set aside. I ran CB/ham in my rigs from the beginning. Off-Road I monitored channel 9 if I wasn't using it in a group. My ham always had 146.520 open. Later I would put GMRS on scan when I was out. What I learned is, people in the past were told about calling channels/emergency channels on CB and ham. Today it seems ham is the only one people seem to be pay attention to for a calling channel.

My experience with GMRS across the board is, people treat it differently than CB/ham. With CB/ham more people took their radio seriously. Granted, CB was always a s...t show but everyone knew about channel 9 and 19. With CB quite a few people had their radio, antennas tuned and ran amplified mic's. Ham was always taken seriously. GMRS, not so. In my off road groups, it was all I could do to get people to run proper antennas and stop using FRS handhelds. Its pretty bad when you get 30 yards apart and cant talk to the guy behind you. There are a few people I've met in other states where GMRS has popular repeater channels and some people take it seriously but the majority don't. My opinion on why people don't take GMRS seriously or even care at all is, it became popular during a fad where the radio was just another "cool" accessory like a lift kit, and traction boards. Not only do people not understand them but they don't want to understand them and think their like cell phones. They don't understand why a .5 watt handheld doesn't have the range of a 50 mobile with a good antenna and they don't care.

When I'm not in a group, I run my GMRS in scan mode. If I'm in flat areas or peaks, I may pick up on a group of people chatting but because most people seem to run a CTSS, they cant hear me. I have everyone in my groups turn that off by the way. CTSS is a whole different issue with GMRS. The people I've met think the CTSS codes give them a different channel and don't understand why they can't hear each other if a repeater or another group was on the channel talking at the same time. Again, people don't want to understand them. I had a guy in one of my groups who's radio didn't even work. It would power up and that was it. He knew it was needed in an overland rig but that was it. You couldn't tell him any different. I truly believe the whole "Overlanding" thing was overwhelming to him. Way too many new things to learn and radio was low on the priority list. I've met quite a number of people just like him where their radio barely works because they don't have the understanding or even care to have the understanding.

With all that said, if I want to just chat with people, I've had better luck on ham. CB isn't really a thing anymore and I haven't had one in my rigs for years. In all my time with GMRS, locally and traveling, I think I've only chatted with two people. I also don't get many people on ham any more but that seems to win out across the board. I will always have a GMRS only because I cant convince my group to all switch to ham. I will still always keep my GMRS in scan mode when I'm in the wilderness.