The latest episode of The Two Way Radio Show Podcast is out! We discuss a comment from one of our viewers regarding certain radio manufacturers and the state of GMRS from his point of view.
As always, comments and feedback are welcome!
TWRS-214 - The State of the GMRS in 2026
Show Notes:
TWRS-214 - The State of the GMRS in 2026
Thank you for another great episode. It seems to me the commenter you based the show on may be suffering from unrealistic expectations. You mention that he has an Amature license and that may be part of the issue. I am a HAM, and the reason I got into GMRS was so my family and a few friends could use radio as a purpose driven tool without getting a HAM ticket. In the area where I live there are several 2m and 70cm repeaters but none for GMRS. The HAM repeaters don’t get much use. We use GMRS for specific purposes unrelated to being social on the airwaves and the Service works very well. I have all of the local HAM repeaters as well as LEO and Fire programmed into my KG-935G+ and now my KG-945G so I have access to what may be going on around my area, but GMRS is my go-to for my specific purpose driven radio needs. GMRS meets my expectations even without having a local repeater. I can’t really comment on whether the service is in decline or not. I use it more now than 4 years ago.
Sean
Whether people are satisfied with GMRS or not I think it’s a little bit subjective. It depends on what you’re looking to get out of GMRS. I myself I’m not a GMRS user but from what I gather speaking to people whom I know who are GMRS users, their main purpose seems to be to allow people or parties who are known to each other like family and friends, etc., to communicate with each other. For instance, due to the shorter required antenna height over CB radio, I’m told that GMRS has gained great favor with the four-wheel-drive/off-road crowd. Many offloading clubs use it to keep in contact and I can see it being very good for that purpose.
However, if anyone is getting into GMRS thinking that it is the new 21st-century version of what CB radio was back in it’s heyday ( circa 1970’s, not CB today ) where you could go on the air and make contacts with people you did NOT know before and develop an on air rapport with people, then I think you’re going to be very disappointed in GMRS. It is clearly not that and even though license numbers have gone up there has never been any indication that it’s ever going to be the 21st-century version of what CB radio was back in the heyday of CB radio. One poster on this forum who took a very lengthy road trip and made a post titled “what I hear along the way”, essentially proved my point. He heard nothing, but somehow rationalized how he got great enjoyment out of “monitoring” this abundance of nothing. That I still can’t fathom. At the end of the day I think that the market for a radio service, the purpose of which is for parties known to each other to remain in contact is a limited market in terms of size and this fact more than any other is going to limit the growth of GMRS or stop its growth altogether. Ham radio, strikes me as something where people make long distance contacts with Parties previously unknown to them and then cultivate an on air relationship. I don’t think that will ever happen with GMRS. It is more of a niche service.
The snag in my head to all this is the question about expectations. The radio is a tool. Nothing more. A channel to achieve an end product. If the aim - the entire point of what you are doing - is to allow two or more people to talk reliably, then that is NOT amateur radio. Or at least not what amateur radio was created for. I’m old enough to remember when the UK ham licence contained the sentence “Self-training in the use of radio”. We went through a period in the 70s/80s of getting hold of teleprinters and telex machines, connecting them to little boxes we built from kits, that we squirted into radios. The hams into emergency radio stuff (like me) loved them and the actual radios were unimportant, as long as they worked. By and large, hams talk absolute rubbish for hours. Us Brits can bore people to death with talk about the weather, the temperature, the exact type of rain we have. It matters little what band we are on. If you spoke to a stranger, you told them your name, where you were, what rig you had, what antenna and how strong the other station’s signal was. Very rarely that took 30 seconds - you could stretch it for at least 5 minutes. Using repeaters brought in a wave of dissent - not proper radio, the repeater was doping the work, etc etc. Nothing has changed. CB users arrived about 1980 after that Convoy movie. Many hams were born from CBers fed up with the huge antennas and low reliable ranges.
Nowadays Governments all over the world have their own family and business radio needs. You need to talk to friends, employees or colleagues, reliably. Maybe a shoe shop, or garage, or warehouse, or group of car or motorbike fans. The radio becomes a tool. None of these people are interested in the make and model of the radio - it just has to work.
We are left with hobby radio - any system, and purpose radio - to enable communications. Everyone falls into one category.
The friction always comes when they bump into each other. The business owner does NOT want to talk to strangers, the hobby folks ONLY want to to to people they don’t know.
EXCELLENT subject
I think most people thought GMRS would be the NEXT generation of CB radio. When that never materialized, many people, including myself to some extent, began to see GMRS as a FAILED experiment. CB had become sort of the idiot’s party line
As a retired Broadcast Engineer, I am NOT an amateur radio enthusiast, and have NEVER wanted to be a “ham” for a number of reasons that I won’t go into.
Here in the Memphis, TN area (USA), GMRS never really caught on. The demographics may have had something to do with it. I invested a LOT of money into the GMRS “hobby”. Unfortunately, it was not money well spent. Two 50 watt base stations, one upstairs and one downstairs. Expensive antennas, 50 watt mobiles, am NOT bragging, just confessing that I overdid it.
GMRS really hasn’t changed much in this area at all. It’s used quite a bit, by companies with employees working in technical fields OUTDOORS for daily communication purposes and by schools coordinating outdoor kid drop offs in the morning and pickups in the afternoon.
FRS is pretty useless, all the time! My only recommendation would be to reduce the number of FRS channels significantly, and increase the number of 50 Watt GMRS channels.
I see no need to expand the FRS/GMRS band at all.
It’s interesting that here in the UK, radio comms has always been a bit different. We experimented 40 years ago with UHF ‘CB’ up in the 900MHz band of all places but it fell totally flat and vanished. We have one system - PMR446, which is broadly the same as the US FRS system in UHF with very low power. The really strange thing though is that for years we have had business type licences of multiple types (and different prices). We are a small country - nobody is more than 100 miles from the sea. Radio congestion in the 80’s-00’s was really bad. Phones have eased it considerably. If you are a business you can apply for a technically coordinated frequency - they check the local area and give you one channel. You can pay for more if you wish. Power in sensible so my one easily covers the local area and south is pretty good further away, but north limited due to topography. There could be some frequency sharing in the big cities, but nobody uses my channel. The alternative are sets of available frequencies in a couple of types - spread over VHF and UHF. You take out the licence, pick a channel and away you go. My hire radios are on these channels. Rare to find more than maybe a couple in use and with tones, not even an issue. The really odd thing is that nobody ever uses these to talk to strangers. I always assumed that having the full set in your legal radio, with a proper licence would be a great way to chat over longer distances. but nobody does it, and the licence does not contain any ‘only speak to your own people’ terms? One version of the licence even allows repeater use - but the channels around here have a factory, two schools and a driving lesson business - that’s about all I hear from the office. Our short range system is the one people use for chit chat, but even that is rare. Peopel are using POC type cellular like Zello - that seems popular.
Ham activity is not that busy - I read that ham numbers are down to 70,000 or so which isn’t wonderful. CB must be much lower. Radio seems to be going out of fashion.
I agree with you except expanding the GMRS.
It takes the load off Citizens Band Radio and the ones you do not want on Citizens Band Radio.
It a FAD like CB was in the mid 1970’s.
I was using CB since the 1960’s had my license under my father’s name. He had 3 feet from when using the CB .
I agree on HAM. I have study for HAM 2 times in life and did not take test.
Dave
I would do it Dave - you’ll get more options than you have at the moment - especially as you like HF
It not options I like Citizens Band Radio is 30Mhz.
I know a lot people like options make hobby more fun .
I like GMRS FRS and MRS takes load off Citizens Band Radio.
Citizens Band only has 40 channels. I would like more options on Citizens Band but the FCC said No.
Dave
Nice view point
GMRS radio as long as the repeaters are working.
The only drawback to any VHF or UHF radios.
On repeater is like cellphone in earthquake
On the ground.
For every day use around town a very nice radio fits pocket.
Dave