Welcome in to the Prepcom's podcast.
I'm your host Caleb Nelson and we are
in the midst of the GMRS radio service
series.
Yeah, are you listening on a podcast player?
Some of you probably are and I bet
some of you are listening, air quote, on
YouTube.
Yeah, I had a listener, a viewer, whatever
you want to call it, tell me that
hey, YouTube is for video stuff.
I get it.
I totally do.
That's why I was so...
I didn't get in a hurry to get
on YouTube with this program because it is
video.
I understand that completely.
But at the same time, there's a huge
number of people who listen to this show
on YouTube.
So that's why it's here.
But thank you for reminding me of that.
Hey, speaking of reminders, you can go back
and look in my Instagram feed and you
can look at some of my stuff and
you'll see that for months I've been encouraging
people to check out a guy on YouTube,
terminal element.
And he's on Instagram as well.
Doesn't do a whole lot there, but on
YouTube he makes some great videos.
He's a fire medic out in the great
Northwest somewhere.
And he talks, what really caught me was
he creates these videos where he's building a
system to be able to utilize his amateur
radio license and other things to communicate with
his family when he's out on a remote
fire.
So out in the middle of nowhere in
the high mountains, I think it's probably Washington
or Oregon, somewhere out there.
And he's a fire medic.
So he's in an ambulance, but like a,
you know, an all-wheel drive, four-wheel
drive kind of forest fire fighting ambulance.
And he goes out and he talks about
how he's able to communicate with home base,
his wife and kids.
It's really cool.
So if that's something that interests you, you
really should be checking terminal element out.
Now my show is not about terminal element,
but I have found that he did not
realize I was also on YouTube.
Of course, it's not a video that you're
watching, but he's listening and he's, he says
he's been telling people that need to know,
hey, go check out the prep comms podcast
sharing my show with a podcast player.
And he just realized I'm on YouTube.
So just a shout out, man.
Thank you very much.
And again, if you haven't watched this stuff,
I want to encourage you to, it's really,
really good.
So why do I even mention that here?
Well, I didn't realize, I didn't anticipate the
feedback that I would get into this GMRS
series.
Now I knew I knew that it was
necessary.
I knew there were a lot of people
asking for this series and have been since
I started back talking, you know, AM FM
radios a year or so ago, but here
we are.
We're in the GMRS and all of a
sudden the second show just blew up with
comments on YouTube.
And either I get time to time, there's
comments on a podcast episode, but those are
harder to do.
I understand that YouTube's easy for everybody to
comment on and a lot of folks have.
So thank you all, whether you're listening to
a podcast or you're watching this blank video
on YouTube now.
So what I did, I decided to pause
my outline here and give you some real
world filled reports and lessons from folks who
were out there in YouTube land that shared
with me what they've got going on.
So I'm just going to go through and
if I get your, if I get your
site, your call sign or your, your name,
identifier or wrong, I want to do the
best I can.
Cause some of these names that just run
together and ADHD is real.
Forgiven dash C five hotel.
I believe he's up in Western North Carolina.
We've talked quite often in YouTube in the
comments and he's always got a lot of
great stuff to say, but one of the
things I wanted to mention here because of
his comment is great.
He said, if he had had GMRS during
the hurricane Helene, he would have felt a
lot more substantial with his understanding of what
was going on locally.
Cause he's been told that the repeaters in
his area were discussing road closures, gas stations
that had gas, which one's only taking cash.
And he kind of just, he's lamenting he
didn't have it Um, Adam, Oh man, Adam,
how do you say your last name?
But shelter 41 21, uh, he uses GMRS
quite frequently in the Northern Sierra Nevada mountain
range in California.
Now I've been out in that area.
It's amazing.
Uh, he didn't think it was so great,
but I mean, of course I was visiting,
uh, you know, eight, 10,000 feet above
sea level is fantastic when you're living at
528 over here in South Carolina.
But he want to let me know that
he has several Peters that he uses in
that area and they can talk.
This is GMRS. These are repeaters that are
up at these extreme elevations compared to my
528, right?
Uh, and they're getting 75 to a hundred
miles range with their repeaters and two of
the, two of the, um, guys, I guess
out there, he's been, you know, having conversations
with or whatever they're getting up to 50
miles simplex.
Now what that means is there's no repeater
between those, but let's say one guy's on
a peak and another guy's on a peak
and they're talking 50 miles away from each
other.
And he's like, his comment is, I can
see what you mean by antennas and terrain
being a major influencer and they are.
So if you have that range, if you
have that height, if you have those antennas
in place, you can do that.
People like me, man, we have to put
up towers.
We have to get over humps.
Um, it's, it's not a lot of fun.
So depending on where you live, it's going
to affect your radio service.
These are real world examples.
And thank you, Adam.
I appreciate that film.
695 says here in Eastern Tennessee, we had
the best GMRS repeater network.
Anyone could ask for it's open and has
a huge coverage area.
So he didn't say where in East Tennessee
he is, but I'm guessing probably Knoxville, maybe
Gatlinburg, Severeville somewhere in there.
Okay.
So if you're out here on the East
coast and you're going to check out the
Christmas lights at Dollywood this year, take your
GMRS radio, look it up in repeater finder
and see what you can come up with.
You may find film 695, um, James Brown
Miller 808.
This is, this is a huge comment and
you can find all this in the second
episode of the GMRS show, um, in the
YouTube comments on the YouTube channel.
And these are just real world examples.
I think for me to come on and
say, Hey man, GMRS is great for you
and your family.
You should check it out.
It works really good.
These are real examples of things that folks
are doing.
So this is a little different, not necessarily
GMRS, but I wanted to share it with
you anyway, because this again goes back to
Adam and his comments about height above average
terrain.
So the short version of this is James
Brown Miller is a member of the civil
air patrol.
He's also a former Marine.
Are you ever a former Marine?
I don't think so, but thank you for
your service.
Uh, so he's in the CAP and he's,
he tells a story.
It's in the, it's in the YouTube show,
YouTube note.
So you should go back and read it
where the civil air patrol put a repeater
up in an airplane at 10,000 feet
and it works so well.
They asked them to take it down because
it was interfering with other relief operations after
the, uh, a flood that they had in
Texas, 550 miles away.
Okay.
So the repeaters at 10,000 feet and
it's got a 550 mile radius.
Okay.
Do you, did you hear what I say?
10,000 feet is like the godlike view.
So it's an airplane is elevated.
There's nothing in the way.
It's looking down and it's got a 500
mile radius.
That's, that's what the height above average terrain
will do.
Uh, it's not every 10,000 repeaters going
to talk for 500 miles, but when it's
like the space station and looking down on
the earth, there's nothing between it except clouds
and atmosphere that you have to get through.
So it makes a difference.
Again, we're talking about real life experiences and
we're talking about this is real.
This, this is how this stuff works.
Radio is magic.
Totally get it.
Don't let it confuse you.
It's not about, uh, bragging.
Okay.
We're just talking about real life experiences here.
Jeff Skidmore, 64, uh, he came in with
a huge point for a future show, but
I'm going to drop it in here now.
He's talking about the difference that coax cable
makes.
It's a maker or a breaker.
It's because it's part of your antenna system.
So here's the deal.
Um, the coax cable goes from your radio
to the antenna and you can buy coax
cable in all kind of flavors.
I mean, you can buy cheap, you can
buy a mid range and you can buy
expensive.
And a lot of times the cheap just
won't get it done in the GMRS frequency
range.
So you want to spend some money here.
Matter of fact, you should probably spend more
on the coax than you do your antenna.
And that freaks people out when you tell
them that because they're thinking, but the antenna
is 150 bucks or the antenna is $100
of $75.
I've got a $30 antenna for the 220,
220 megahertz ham radio band.
And I spent $75 on the coax cable.
So, uh, sometimes it takes that you have
to, the signal has to be able to
pass through the cable effectively to get out
of the antenna.
If you operate with a very low cost,
high, um, high loss coax cable, your signal
is going to get lost in the, in
the wire and it's not going to be
able to get out of the antenna and
vice versa.
So it works on, on the receive as
well.
So rule of thumb here, if you're putting
up anything beyond say 25 feet of coax
cable from your radio to the antenna, find
yourself an LMR 400 equivalent cable.
Okay.
LMR Lima mic Romeo dash 400.
And that's the baseline you should start with
when feeding a base station antenna with GMRS
frequencies.
Okay.
Got it.
Um, man, Timothy stockman, 75 33 wrote a
dissertation for us in, in the comments to
the point that I'll probably do an episode
just on Timothy stockman seven 75 33 comments.
And I appreciate it so much.
It's just too much to cover here, but
he broke down some really great points.
He talks about the channelization of the FRS
and the GMRS frequencies and what, what frequencies
are good for repeaters and where you can
use the 50 Watts and where you have
to use the half watt.
He reminds us that the license covers your
whole household and you have to be responsible
for whomever uses it underneath you.
If you want some information, some great info,
this written really well and makes a lot
of sense.
Check out the comments in the GMRS part
two from Timothy stockman 75 33.
Thank you for sharing that with us, sir.
Um, up next, Ken Adamson 45 35 is
in Brevard, North Carolina, which happens to be
the place where I have some of the
best memories of camping as a child at
the Davidson river campground before they had electricity
on any of their sites.
And, uh, it was just the best, the
best times ever.
If you're out this way and you're looking
for a great campground, uh, you cannot beat
Davidson river in Brevard, North Carolina.
So he asked about, you know, he's got
some antennas and he's got some questions and
he's trying to figure out what would work
best from his home as well as in
his car.
And he's about 18 to 20 miles away
from the local repeaters and he's having some
issues, you know, getting in clear and clean
all the time.
And the guts of it is he's asking,
should I put up a directional antenna?
And in South Carolina, we call that a
Yagi and probably my friends out West probably
call it a Yagi.
Either way, it's a directional antenna.
It looks kind of like a small miniature
version of the old school TV antennas we
used to have on our chimneys back in
the day.
And it focuses the, uh, the energy from
your radio and the energy that your radio
receives in a specific direction instead of an
omnidirectional pattern.
Uh, these things can be had for like
38 to 45 bucks on, on eBay, Amazon,
whatever.
I'll try to remember to put a link
in the show notes.
Um, should you do that?
Well, that's depending if you want to put
that up there and leave it pointed in
the same direction.
Now you can put a tip, uh, these
things are small enough.
You can use a television style antenna rotator.
Uh, those aren't cheap anymore, by the way,
but you can still do that and turn
it around and aim it in different directions.
If you're wanting to talk a certain, certain
way.
Uh, he asked about, uh, different antennas.
Uh, my favorite, my pick is my friend
and one that we stock and that is
the ZBM two industries.
Derek makes those handheld antennas.
He also makes vehicular antennas and, um, they're
hard to beat, uh, in a lot of
different ways.
I mean, they're tough as nails, plus they
work great.
That's why I stock them.
I run them on everything that I own
as well as we have in our store.
Now we have a roll up GMRS slash
M U R S roll up J pole
that works with your handies or works in
HOA or whatever.
So, uh, I'm not trying to sell you
either of those, but for me, I'm putting
a ZBM two industries whip antenna on every
handy talkie I own the end.
And if you're, if you need something to
put in your backpack and you want something
on these frequencies, we have those for you
in our GMRS, M U R S roll
up.
So you can check that out at prep
coms.shop. Uh, I'm going to keep going
here.
I'm just trying to get through these because
they're, they're so much good stuff here.
And, um, here, here, Steven alds, he has
a great question that could really, uh, be
a whole show unto itself.
And I think we're probably going to do
a show on this Steven coming up.
Uh, Steven asked, Hey man, uh, good stuff
here.
Thank you for posting, but I've got a
question.
I want to put an antenna on my
roof and be able to use my GMRS
radio throughout the house.
Is there maybe a transmitter that I can
plug the antenna to, to make this happen?
Uh, yes.
Um, and we're going to figure out the
best way to do that for you.
I know how most people are going to
do this and it's not, uh, it doesn't
meet the rules, but this is how most
people will tell you how to do this.
I'm not telling you how to do this.
This is how most people would choose to
do this.
Cause we've already talked about this in our
MERS shows in the comments here on YouTube.
So, uh, most guys will take a MERS
radio or they'll take a dual band, a
VHF UHF Chinese mobile radio that will do
what they call crossband repeat.
You can even do this with some handy
talkies.
If you get one that has a crossband
repeater built into it and what that does,
it allows you to use, let's say a
VHF walkie talkie in your bedroom and it
transmits to a radio listening on a VHF
frequency.
And then in its internals, it then spits
that out like a repeater does at the
same time, the speed of light out on
a UHF signal, which goes out of the
antenna to the local repeater.
And nobody on the other end really knows
that you're doing that.
And it's against the rules to use MURS
in that fashion.
That's how a lot of people are doing
it.
Are there other ways to do it?
Can you put a small repeater on your
property?
Absolutely, man.
You can build those things out of little
mobile radios.
You can build them out of walkie talkies.
A lot of different ways to skin that
cat.
And again, it may not be the next
show, but in this series, I believe we're
probably going to talk about it because I
can see that being an issue.
I have lived that problem back in the
day as an early in my ham, whatever
you'd call that.
We had a local repeater here that was
in a different location than it is now
and really hard to get into from my
house.
So I had a radio in my E350
van, the Millennium Falcon.
It was silver.
And that radio had a crossband repeater in
it and I would transmit on one frequency
and it would repeat it on the on
a different band and I could get in
the repeater free and clear.
That would allow me to just leave the
radio in the truck on all the time
with a high gain antenna connected to that.
You could do this as a base station
as well, but it was just mounted in
my truck.
It was a Kenwood TMV 71 Alpha.
If anybody cares, it was one of the
greatest radios I've ever owned.
I had to sell them when Carla got
sick and I'm still sick about having to
sell them, but they're great radios if you
can find one cheap.
Anyway, this thing had a crossband repeater in
it and I could go anywhere on my
property with these little bitty UHF handy talkies
and transmit from it and it'd go to
the van and from the van it would
go out of the antenna and from the
antenna it would go to the local repeater
and go out on that frequency and I
could talk all over the place.
It was so convenient until I would forget
to turn the automatic timer on off and
I would come out and my van would
be dead.
So my radio would actually kill the battery.
That's more than you wanted to know.
Thank you so much for Zulu 7 Delta
3 November Romeo 4.
I don't know what that means, but his
comment was, thank you for helping me understand
the basics of radio usage.
Now this may be one of the most,
I don't know, humbling or whatever you want
to call it.
The guts of my response to that comment
is this.
The reason I sit here and record these
programs and write these blog posts and have
these websites and have podcasts and create content,
that's why.
That's why you see it's my goal to
help people who don't know how to do
these things, how to do them.
It might even be that you know how
to do it, but you just really don't
want to spend the time to do it.
I can help you with that too.
So the whole thing is, thank you for
allowing me to help you understand the basics
of radio usage.
That is why we started at how to
listen to an AM FM radio.
That's why we started at here's a shortwave
radio.
What is it even for?
Why do we have a weather radio?
It wasn't because I thought everybody listening was
just a dummy.
I'm trying to build a repertoire of information
here that when you get to a point
in your communications journey and you're wanting to
learn more, that's what the prep comms podcast
is for.
So like terminal element tells people, hey, if
you're curious, go check this guy out.
That's why I'm doing this to help people
build that knowledge.
And if again, if it's not, if you're
not here to learn, you just need somebody
to help you do it or do it
for you.
I'm your guy.
Let me know.
We can talk about that down the road.
Harambe 4628.
I said that wrong, probably.
And I think that's like a, a meme
from back in the day that I never
really, I had two, my kids were too
small to get into that meme.
I don't remember that one much, but maybe
a gorilla.
I don't know either way.
He says, this is the most accurate video
out there.
What?
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Um, yeah.
Um, I mean, I hope that I'm creating
great content here for you.
And that, that just makes me feel fantastic.
Thank you so much.
Guest pass who decides to use a five
instead of the letter S commented, uh, he's
got the license and he's, he's connected with
the local guy who has the repeater.
He's registered and he can get on there.
Um, he's, he's not used to it yet,
but he just want to let me know
that he could if he needed to.
And he appreciated the content.
Thanks, man.
Uh, Michael Franzetti, uh, 3900.
Um, he's been a ham for about 20
years.
He's typically only uses the VHF and UHF
bands primarily on handy talkies.
And one of the things he says here,
the most difficult thing about amateur radio.
Now this is GMRS. Don't, don't go anywhere
guys.
This is a ham talking to another ham.
He said the hardest thing for him to
do is to convince his friends and families
to get licensed so that he could actually
have somebody he'd want to talk to somebody
that he cares about.
I get that.
And because of that, he says, I've been
looking heavily into GMRS, also CB and MURs,
uh, as an alternative to bring his friends
in.
And I'll tell you as a dude, there's
nothing like having a buddy or 10 on
the radio to talk to.
Now we have a great ham population here
where I live and I get along with
everybody, but there are some folks who are
my friends.
I mean, I'm friends with everybody, but you
got buddies, right?
And I love hearing my buddy on the
radio.
I love talking to my buddies on the
radio, my friends, if you don't like the
word buddy.
Uh, but either way, I get exactly what
you're saying, sir.
And thank you for your comment.
Uh, GMRS is great.
It's really easy.
It costs 35 bucks.
You fill out a form on the FCC
website and you're, you're good.
You can even share with them and this
will be in the show notes.
Michael, you can share with them.
My GMRS how to, it's a very simple,
um, series of prompts that you can utilize
with AI.
So if you're using Claude or if you're
using GPT, you take these prompts one at
a time and you open up the FCC
website and it walks you through every single
step, where to click, what, what to put
there, what to put in that box.
And it takes this mystery out of the
FCC website, which is a stinker, by the
way.
I think they built it in 95 and
I don't think they've changed it.
It still looks like it's running on XP.
Uh, that's all I got to say.
They're, they're closed right now anyway, but I,
I'm betting they'll be opened by Monday as
my guest.
Uh, Larry J, uh, Larry Jensen, 40, 11,
this guy, I love this guy's comment.
Um, thank you, by the way, Larry, uh,
for, for commenting and listening here, guys, take,
take this in.
So you've heard me talk about using a
top rail post for a chain link fence
to elevate your antennas.
Now I normally do this with one single
piece.
It's about 10 or 15 feet long.
I think it's 10 feet.
And, uh, I'll use that as a mast.
It's a really expensive mast.
I think it's a little heavier duty than
the old TV antenna mast that we used
to sell at Radio Shack.
It feels heavier.
Maybe, uh, maybe I'm just gotten older and
it's literally heavier, but either way, um, Larry
wants to put up a 50 foot mast
built out of these 10 foot sections of
the top rail from chain link fence.
And he has a great idea.
I want you to go check the comments
out in the second episode, which will be
linked here in these show notes.
But he's talking about using them, cutting them
down, uh, one third and two third links
to have less stress on the overall, overall
mast.
And I want to say, Larry, there's people
listening like this guy's crazy.
Uh, that's never going to work.
It's, it's too, it's too flimsy.
Um, he's talking about putting it in the
concrete base and, and, you know, grounding it
properly and, and whatever.
Um, and he wants to, um, he's going
to, he's going to guy it as well,
but here's the thing.
So you guys are like, man, there's no
way it's going to work.
I've got a friend, a buddy, and doc
is his name in four.
I, I is his call in in four.
I sorry, November, November four, India, India is
his ham radio call sun and doc has
60 feet of fiberglass military mast up with
a really nice dual band vertical on the
top of the mast.
And you're like, okay, so what, well, he's
got it guide.
All right.
And it works really, really good.
He's at a really high point in our
county, maybe one of the higher points in
the county.
He can talk all over the place, simplex
radio to radio.
He's on his base station home and his
wife can be at the grocery store.
He can call her through that base station
into her walkie talkie in her pocket book.
And she, I mean, they don't hardly ever
use a cell phone because of the elevation
and the way they're able to do this.
Here's the thing you're like, Oh, I'm not
impressed.
Well, you would be impressed if you saw
the tornado that went past docs house about
three to five years ago, within, I don't
know, maybe a quarter of a mile.
It destroyed so much.
It's incredible what it destroyed and his mast
still stands.
It's amazing.
Like we, everybody knew one that doc was
probably dead and to his antenna would be
down neither happened.
And it's still up and working like a
champ.
So yes, uh, Larry Janssen, when you get
this thing up, man, we want to know
about it and send us some pictures.
We'll put them up on the website.
All right.
So here's the deal.
Uh, Kate Cheney, 56, he reminded me that
again, YouTube is a video site and this
is an audio only podcast.
Yes.
And I appreciate you coming back and listen
to this program too.
Uh, seriously, um, I have a face made
for radio and this is my audio podcast
that we put up here and I appreciate
your listening.
Um, don't forget, if you want to get
your GMRS license, they're linking to show notes
here for the, the, uh, express GMRS express.
And it again, it's, it's a prompts that
gets you through the FCC website.
Even if it's not open, they're still allowing
you to apply.
And by doing so, when they do open
back up, you'll be in the queue and
have your license as soon as they get
around to that, I guess, uh, Thursday night,
7 PM.
If you want to know more about how
to apply GMRS, FRS, MURs, scanners, short waves,
all these different types of radios into your
family communications plan.
I do a webinar live on Facebook Thursday
night, 7 PM Eastern family connect system.com.
That's the show sponsor.
It's my, my personal business here.
It's a way, it's a system.
It's built for you and your family to
integrate and have a communication systems at the
phone quit working.
Now, if that's more than you want to
do again, you let me know.
We can, we can talk directly and I
can help you build something out that direction.
Um, anyway, remember, you need to have these
things in place before something were to happen.
And that's why you're listening to this program.
If we can help you in any way,
please let us know.
Remember, you can find us online at prep
comms.com.
And until next time, again, thank you for
all of this great feedback.
We'll be back next time as we continue
the conversation on GMRS radio.
But until then, 73 all, God bless.