Comms when the grid is down

Start with the page next door

Our off-grid networking guide covers the mesh layer — Meshtastic, LoRa, and the ham data modes like APRS and Winlink that reach out of an affected area. This page is the other half: the licensing facts that decide what you are allowed to transmit on, the battery math that decides how long any of it runs, and the household plan without which none of it matters.

Read that one for the network. Read this one for the rules, the power, and the people.

FRS: the blister-pack tier

FRS, the Family Radio Service, is licensed by rule — no license, no fee, no paperwork. The FCC authorizes the public to use certified FRS radios directly, which is why they hang on a hook at the hardware store.

The rules also cap what the service can ever be. Twenty-two channels, shared with GMRS. Effective radiated power is limited to 2 watts on channels 1 through 7 and 15 through 22, and 0.5 watts on channels 8 through 14. The antenna must be non-detachable. That last rule is the ceiling on the whole service: you cannot fix an FRS radio's range with a better antenna, by design.

GMRS: the same band with the handcuffs off

GMRS, the General Mobile Radio Service, requires an individual license — but no exam. The FCC set the license term at 10 years and the application fee at $35, and one license covers the holder's immediate family, so a household licenses once and everybody in it is legal.

What that buys is higher power limits, detachable and external antennas, and access to repeaters. The repeater is the part that actually changes range: a machine on high ground takes your handheld transmission and rebroadcasts it across a county. If the question is "how do I talk further," the answer is usually a repeater and a license rather than a more expensive handheld.

Amateur radio: the exam that people postpone for years

Amateur radio — ham — is the licensed hobby service, and the entry ticket is the Technician license: a 35-question multiple-choice exam drawn from a published public question pool, no Morse code requirement since 2007, a $35 FCC application fee, and a 10-year term. Volunteer examiner groups run the sessions and usually charge a small session fee set by the examiner group.

Technician gives you the VHF and UHF bands where local repeaters, emergency nets, and most disaster communication actually happen, plus some HF privileges. It is a weekend of study. People talk themselves out of it for a decade.

One rule gets quoted badly, so here it is straight: 47 CFR 97.403 says no provision of the amateur rules prevents an amateur station from using any means of radiocommunication at its disposal to provide essential communication needs in connection with the immediate safety of human life and immediate protection of property when normal communication systems are not available. Read the words: an amateur station, essential needs, immediate, and normal systems unavailable. It is a narrow provision, not a permission slip to transmit on services you are not licensed for. The time to be licensed is before.

Range claims and the terrain that eats them

The "36 MILE RANGE" on the package is measured under conditions you will never have — two radios on hilltops with nothing in between. VHF and UHF are essentially line-of-sight. The useful mental model is that your range is decided by what is between the two radios, not by the power number on the box.

• Flat open ground, handheld to handheld: a mile or two is a realistic FRS expectation. GMRS at higher power extends that, but it does not repeal geometry.
• Hills, buildings, and dense forest cut it hard, and urban blocks are usually worse than woods.
• Height beats power every time. Getting the antenna up — a hill, an upstairs window, a mast — does more than doubling watts.
• A repeater is the real answer to range, which is the practical argument for holding a GMRS or ham license instead of a fistful of FRS radios.
• An external antenna is the best-value upgrade in the category on a licensed radio. On FRS it is not an option at all — the antenna is fixed by rule.

Battery reality

Every radio conversation ends at the battery, and radio runtime ratings flatter themselves. The industry convention is a 5/5/90 duty cycle — five percent transmitting, five percent receiving, ninety percent idle — and transmitting is where the current goes. A day of real coordination looks nothing like a day of standby.

• Transmit is expensive, listening is cheap, and a squelched radio sitting idle is nearly free. Talk less, listen more, and the battery lasts.
• Cold cuts capacity. Lithium-ion at freezing temperatures delivers noticeably less than it does at room temperature, and it largely recovers when warmed — so an inside pocket is a battery upgrade.
• Standardize the cell. A household where the lights and the radios take the same battery has one spares pile instead of five.
• Prefer radios with an AA tray option or a USB-C charge port. A proprietary cradle that needs a wall outlet is a radio with a grid dependency, which is a strange thing to own for this purpose.
• Charge everything at the start of the event, not in the middle. Power banks and a folding panel are comms infrastructure now — the off-grid networking guide makes the same point about mesh nodes for the same reason.
• A receive-only NOAA Weather Radio draws almost nothing and delivers watches, warnings, and official instructions without transmitting at all. Per unit of battery, it is the most informative radio in the house.

The plan is the gear that matters

A household with six radios and no plan is worse off than a household with a card in every wallet. The plan is free, it takes fifteen minutes on a calm day, and it survives the radios being dead.

• One out-of-area contact everyone reports to. Long-distance routes often work when local ones are congested, and the relay collects everyone's status so nobody has to reach each other directly.
• A check-in schedule rather than continuous monitoring: on the hour, for five minutes, on an agreed channel. Continuous monitoring flattens batteries and nobody keeps it up anyway.
• A primary channel and a backup, written down, plus any privacy or CTCSS code. "Channel 3" means nothing if half the household is on a different code.
• Rally points: one near home, one outside the neighborhood, and the rule for when to move between them.
• Written cards in wallets, packs, and the glovebox with numbers, channels, and rally points. Phones die and stress erases memory — our civil unrest guide makes the same argument for get-home planning.
• Text before you call on the cell network, for the reason in the power outage guide: a text is a small burst that queues and retries, while a call needs a channel congestion cannot spare.
• Practice. A monthly five-minute radio check is the difference between a system and a drawer of plastic. The group that has sent a hundred boring messages sends the important one without thinking.

What radios do not solve

Radios are coordination, not rescue. They do not summon help on their own, they do nothing if nobody is listening, and two-way traffic between untrained strangers in an emergency is mostly noise. If the requirement is "reach someone who can send help, from anywhere," that is a satellite messenger — a different device, a subscription, and its own honest limits.

And the legal edge, plainly: transmitting on a service you are not licensed for is an FCC matter, and these rules change. The figures on this page were read from FCC sources in September 2026; check the current FCC pages for FRS, GMRS, and amateur radio before you buy. That is awareness, not legal advice.

Turn this into a list you own

The comms slot in a kit is small and specific: something that receives official information without the internet, something that reaches the people in your household, and the power to keep both alive. Our kit builder will put a version together from the catalog inside a budget you pick, and the 72-hour kit guide shows where comms sits against water, light, and shelter.